In August 2010, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of Jesse Friedman on technical legal grounds,[25] but took the unusual step of urging prosecutors to reopen Friedman's case, saying that there was a "reasonable likelihood that Jesse Friedman was wrongfully convicted".[26] The decision cited "overzealousness" by law enforcement officials swept up in the hysteria over child molestation in the 1980s.
Following the appeals court ruling, the Nassau District Attorney's office began a three-year investigation led by District Attorney Kathleen M. Rice. On June 24, 2013, the report was released. In a 155-page report,[27] the district attorney's office concluded that none of four issues raised in a strongly-worded 2010 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was substantiated by the evidence. Instead, it concluded, "By any impartial analysis, the reinvestigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman, his advocates and the Second Circuit, has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman's guilty plea and adjudication as a sex offender." Jesse Friedman was regarded as a "narcissist" and a "psychopathic deviant" by a psychiatrist his attorney hired to conduct an evaluation.[28] Judge Boklan was said to have been subject to "selectively edited and misleading film portrayals in Capturing the Friedmans".
The work was guided and overseen by a four-member independent advisory panel, which included Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project, one of the country's leading advocates for overturning wrongful convictions, and a member of O. J. Simpson's defense team.[29] However, Scheck has subsequently complained that key documents were not available to the panel,[30] and urged the matter be reopened.[31]
Prior to the report's release, new details emerged, including letters and affidavits[32] from some of the alleged victims in which they recanted their accusations and implicated the police in coercing their statements.[5]
The Village Voice conducted an interview with Jesse Friedman,[33] who described himself as "freakishly optimistic", and also reported that Ross Goldstein, a childhood friend of his, had broken his 25 year silence[34] to explain he had been coerced into cooperating with the district attorney's office: "He told the review panel of how he'd been coerced into lying, how prosecutors coached him through details of the Friedmans' computer lab, which he'd never even seen, and how he was imprisoned for something he'd never done."[35]
On February 10, 2015, Jesse Friedman was back in state appellate court seeking to have Nassau County prosecutors turn over to him the remainder of their evidence against him.[36] That December, a state Appeals Court found that the prosecutors did not have to release the records. Because Friedman pled guilty and there was no trial, a spokesperson for the Nassau County District Attorney claimed the records of witnesses who did not testify are confidential, and the law does not mandate their disclosure.[37] However, on November 27, 2017, the NYS Court of Appeals reversed the lower court,[38] and overturned the DA's claim regarding "confidential witnesses", and ordered the lower court to oversee disclosure of Friedman case files to the defendant.[39]
