A Putnam County man whose murder convictions have twice been overturned is set to walk out of jail, more than 17 years after he was first locked up, while he waits for a third trial. A county judge has granted his request for release, a decision that will see him leave custody within days and return to a relative's home under court supervision rather than remain behind bars in the meantime.
Anthony Grigoroff has been held since May 2009 in connection with the case, and he is expected to be fitted with an ankle bracelet and freed later this week once the paperwork is completed. Under the conditions set by the court, he will be allowed to leave the home only for medical and legal appointments, and only after giving the court advance notice, keeping him under close monitoring while the prosecution continues.
Prosecutors say the case dates back to December 2008, when Grigoroff was in a car near the Garrison Garage on Route 9. According to their account, his brother was outside the vehicle and a third man was attempting to rob the business when the garage's owner, John Marcinak, confronted the would-be robber and was shot and killed. Although prosecutors say it was that third man who fired the fatal shot, it was Grigoroff who ended up charged with the murder.
Grigoroff was convicted in 2010 and again in 2017, but a state appellate court threw out both convictions, most recently clearing the way for the third trial now ahead. The repeated reversals have left the case unresolved for well over a decade, with the central question of whether he bears any responsibility for the killing still unsettled after two juries and two overturned verdicts.
His attorney, Bruce Barkett, has maintained that the only evidence against Grigoroff is a confession he says should never have stood. Barkett argues that during a 12-hour interrogation, Putnam County detectives used deception to obtain a false admission, and he has been pressing for the third trial to address how and why a person can be led to confess to something they did not do.
Barkett is also seeking cell phone location data that he believes will undercut the prosecution's theory of the case, and he wants the court to authorize a subpoena for records held by a federal task force that has not turned them over. He said he was confident the records would show that the three men were nowhere near the scene when the killing happened, describing the data as powerful exculpatory evidence. Both sides are due back in court on August 18th to resolve the dispute over those phone records.
The release was opposed by the Putnam County district attorney, who argued that Grigoroff should have been kept in jail because the murder charge is too serious and the case against him too strong to justify letting him out. With that disagreement now settled in the defendant's favor for the time being, the third trial remains scheduled to begin on October 14th, the next chapter in a prosecution that has already collapsed twice.