WHITE PLAINS, New York (WABC) — The 1983 conviction of Jeffrey Koonce, a 67-year-old father of an NFL lineman, will be overturned on Friday. Koonce, who spent nearly eight years in prison for robbing a Mount Vernon social club, has always maintained his innocence. This reversal comes after the Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU) uncovered significant flaws in the original case.
The CRU found evidence that Mount Vernon police pressured the sole eyewitness to implicate Koonce. Furthermore, they manipulated the photo array by making Koonce’s picture larger than the others, and failed to interview alibi witnesses who supported his claim of being elsewhere at the time of the crime. A Mount Vernon detective subsequently lied about the composition of the photo arrays during pretrial hearings and the trial. This led to a court order mandating the department to reform its unduly suggestive photo identification practices. Adding to the concerns, one of the detectives involved in Koonce’s case later served prison time following a federal corruption sting.
These actions, including the detective’s lies and the highly suggestive photo identification techniques, constituted a pattern of misconduct that deprived Koonce of a fair trial. District Attorney Rocah stated, “From the highly suggestive photo array and identification procedures, to the totality of CRU’s findings on the MVPD detectives’ methods and credibility, we agree with defense counsel that Jeffrey Koonce’s 1983 conviction was obtained in violation of his constitutional rights to due process and therefore can no longer stand by the integrity of this conviction.”
Since his release, Koonce has built a successful extermination business and raised six children, including Malcolm Koonce, a defensive end for the Las Vegas Raiders, and Dejuan Koonce, a retired New York State Trooper who provided protective detail for Governors Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo.
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