Jeffrey Koonce, father of Las Vegas Raiders player Malcolm Koonce, has been exonerated after serving nearly eight years in prison for an armed robbery he did not commit. Prosecutors uncovered evidence of misconduct by Mount Vernon police, including pressure on the victim-witness and a failure to investigate alibi witnesses.
Prosecutors now say the conviction was tainted by questionable police tactics and a witness identification that was later recanted. Years before Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Malcolm Koonce was born, his father spent time in prison for an armed robbery conviction that prosecutors now say was tainted by questionable police tactics and a witness identification that was later recanted.
On Friday, a suburban New York judge agreed, erasing 67-year-old Jeffrey Koonce’s conviction and dismissing his indictment more than four decades after a 1981 robbery at Vernon Stars Rod and Gun Club in Mount Vernon. Koonce, who spent nearly eight years in prison, has always maintained his innocence and insisted that he was nowhere near the club, where three people were struck by shotgun pellets as patrons were looted of cash and jewelry. Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah backed his request to erase the conviction after her office uncovered problems with the case. Rocah’s Conviction Review Unit investigated the 1983 conviction and found evidence that Mount Vernon police pressured the lone victim-witness to implicate Koonce, made Koonce’s picture larger than others in a photo array and failed to interview alibi witnesses who corroborated his claim that he was elsewhere. A Mount Vernon detective later lied about the composition of the photo arrays when he testified at pretrial hearings and Koonce’s trial, and a court subsequently ordered the department to change its unduly suggestive photo identification practices, Rocah said. One of the detectives involved in Koonce’s case later went to prison after a federal corruption sting. Rocah’s office also found that detectives harmed Koonce by failing to interview all his alibi witnesses. They include a now-retired New York City police detective who said Koonce was with him in the city the night of the robber
EXONERATION WRONGFUL CONVICTION POLICE BRUTALITY ALIBI WITNESSES CRIMINAL JUSTICE
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