By DAVID CARUSO
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Martin Tankleff was a teenager when a police tactic prompted him to confess to stabbing and bludgeoning his parents.

A detective falsely told him his father had awoken from a coma and implicated him in the crime, which in fact killed both his parents. "Could I have blacked out ... and done this?" the Long Island high school student said, according to court documents. He went on to confess but quickly recanted.

Now, after spending half his life behind bars, Tankleff may get a second chance to try to persuade a jury that the confession was a product of police trickery and a teenager's confusion.

A state appeals court has granted him a new trial, saying new evidence suggests that he might be innocent in the 1988 double murder.

The state Supreme Court's Appellate Division said in a unanimous opinion, made public Friday, that new evidence uncovered by private investigators suggested that Seymour and Arlene Tankleff might have been killed because of a business dispute.

The panel of four judges said it was "probable" that a new jury would render a different verdict, if given a chance to reconsider all evidence now available, "including the defendant's confession, how the confession was obtained, and the fact that the defendant almost immediately recanted the confession."

Tankleff's lawyer, Bruce Barket, said his client - now 35 and serving a prison sentence of 50 years to life - was thrilled by the news of the court's decision.

"He said one word: ‘Finally,' " Barket said.

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota issued a brief statement on his office's behalf, saying, "We respectfully disagree with the court's decision."

He didn't say whether prosecutors would appeal or hold a new trial.

The next step in the case, Spota said, will be for a Suffolk County judge to decide whether Tankleff should be released on bail.

Tankleff was convicted on the strength of the confession, made shortly after his mother and father were attacked in their Belle Terre home. He was then 17.

After confessing, he refused to sign a written statement prepared by Suffolk County police, and he has insisted that he was taken in by the detectives' ruse during a lengthy interrogation.

The judges said the repudiated confession was the primary evidence against Tankleff at the trial, and the "linchpin" of the case.

Courts have repeatedly upheld its admissibility. The Appellate Division emphasized in its opinion, signed Dec. 18, that it was granting the trial based on new evidence regarding other suspects.

For years, Tankleff and his supporters have claimed that the murders were the work of Jerry Steuerman, a Long Island businessman. They said he owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the family and was at the home for a poker game on the eve of the killings.

Within days of the murders, Steuerman faked his own death, changed his appearance and went to California. He was never named as a suspect, has repeatedly denied any involvement in the killings and testified as a prosecution witness at Tankleff's trial.

A man who answered the phone at a number listed to Jerry Steuerman in Boca Raton, Fla., said Steuerman wasn't available and declined to comment.

Investigators hired by the defense team tracked down a number of witnesses who claimed to be able to implicate a career criminal, Joseph Creedon, in the killings.

During appeal hearings in the case, Creedon acknowledged that he had a violent past that included working as a debt collector for Steuerman's drug-dealing son, but Creedon said he never killed anyone.

Creedon's lawyer, Anthony LaPinta, said Friday that his client was not involved in the murders and had never had "anything to do with the Tankleffs."

Other courts have ruled that the witnesses produced by the defense team were credible, but the Appellate Division said those judges did not properly consider the evidence.

"It is abhorrent to our sense of justice and fair play to countenance the possibility that someone innocent of a crime may be incarcerated or otherwise punished for a crime which he or she did not commit," they wrote.

Frank Eltman contributed to this report.