Photo Courtesy of Innocence Project
A New York court acquitted a man on Tuesday, Sept. 5, after he was wrongfully convicted of a crime he didn’t commit for 47 years, the Innocence Project reported.
A court wrongfully convicted Leonard Mack of rape and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in March 1976. The Innocence Project conducted a post-conviction investigation to prove Mack’s innocence, and new DNA findings drove the Westchester County District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit to grant him freedom.
“Today, indisputable DNA evidence proves that Leonard Mack is innocent. Nearly five decades later, he finally has some measure of justice,” Mary-Kathryn Smith, an Innocence Project attorney of Macks, said. “Mr. Mack’s resilience and strength is why this day has finally come. We want to thank the Westchester County District Attorney and its Conviction Review Unit for their cooperation and commitment to search for the truth.”
Innocence Project researchers uploaded the new DNA to the local and state DNA database and obtained insightful results. According to the organization, they’ve identified the aggressor, who confessed.
In a statement, Mack thanked those who contributed to his freedom.
“I want to first thank God for this day. Next, I want to thank the Innocence Project. Today has been a long time coming,” Mack, a married (for 21 years) Vietnam War veteran, said. “I lost seven-and-a-half years of my life in prison for a crime I did not commit, and I have lived with this injustice hanging over my head for almost 50 years. It changed the course of my life — everything from where I lived to my relationship with my family. I never lost hope that one day that I would be proven innocent. Now, the truth has come to light, and I can finally breathe. I am finally free.”
The incident happened on May 22, 1975. A man reportedly held two 12th-grade Woodland High School students at gunpoint as they walked home. The rapist gagged and blinded them using their belt and pieces of their jacket. One of the girls was raped twice. Other girls managed to escape without getting raped, and the people they ran to for help contacted the police.
After describing their assailant to police, Greenburgh Police Departments were on the hunt for a Black male “in his early 20s, close-cropped hair, clean shaven with a medium build, wearing black pants, a tan jacket, a black hat with a white brim, and a gold earring in his left ear, and carrying a .22 or .32 caliber handgun.”
Mack got into the mix when he was pulled over, and Officer James Fleming believed he matched the description despite Mack confirming he wasn’t involved in the crime and was with his girlfriend then.
Mack had a fedora hat and gold earrings in his left ear, yet he didn’t have the clothes in the description. Still, he was arrested.
GPD officers brought one of the victims to identify Mack, and after hesitating, she confirmed it was him. They then took her to the station to search through numerous photos of possible suspects. Mack’s photo was the only one that showed face and clothing.
Even when they brought two victims in to view Mack through a one-way mirror, it was an uncertain confirmation because she continued spewing, “I think so” and “It could be.”
Innocence Project argued that the trial ran on racial biases and false testimonies. For example, the forensic results showed that type A was the attacker’s blood type, which wasn’t Mack’s, yet they still convicted him.
The person identified as the actual attacker was convicted of burglary and rape in Queens just weeks after the crime. He was found guilty in 2004 of robbing and sexually assaulting a woman in Westchester County.