Judge allows black suspect's statement about 1978 killing of 5 Newark teens

A Superior Court judge has denied a request to suppress the statement one of the black defendants charged in the decades-old Newark missing teens murder case made to police. Superior Court Judge Patricia Costello ruled that Philander Hampton's November 2008 statement to police, in which he implicated himself and his cousin, Lee Evans, in the August 1978 killing of five Newark teenagers, could be admitted in court. Hampton, 54, and Evans, 57, were charged with luring the teenage boys into a vacant home, locking them inside, then setting the home ablaze. The teens had long been considered missing. In the statement, Hampton mitigates his own role. The defense attorney, Joseph Krakora, had claimed that the detective who interviewed Hampton obtained information prior to the recorded statement without reading Hampton his rights. That day, Hampton told Detective Louis Carrega of the Essex County Prosecutor's Office that he didn't have any information about the missing teenagers. When he failed a polygraph test, Hampton changed his mind, saying he did have information and agreed to a video recorded statement. On the drive to a facility to record that statement, Hampton stopped Carrega at the Camden Street house where he said the boys were taken, and where the home burned. On the report he submitted, Carrega never mentioned his interaction with Hampton, but testified that he read the man his Miranda rights before the polygraph test was administered that day. At the Miranda hearing in Superior Court, Carrega finally submitted that report. Costello found credible Carrega's testimony that he read Hampton his rights, and noted that the detective, who recently retired, was not required to give the Miranda warning when the defendant first arrived at the prosecutor's office.