Father of NFL lineman gets 1983 robbery conviction in Mount Vernon overturned
WHITE PLAINS, New York (WABC) -- The 67-year-old father of an NFL lineman got his 1983 conviction for robbing a Mount Vernon social club overturned when he appeared in court on Friday.
Jeffrey Koonce spent nearly eight years in prison and has always maintained his innocence. Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah is now backing his request after her office uncovered trouble with the case.
"I feel new," said Koonce. "I feel new again. All these years I've been telling everybody I don't know anything about that you're talking about."
In 1981, three men robbed a social club on Sanford Boulevard, with one of them opening fire with a sawed off shotgun that hit a teenage boy. The boy's hazy recollection formed the basis of a flawed identification of Koonce.
Koonce maintained to this day he wasn't even in Mount Vernon at the time.
"The idea that you would just collect whatever African American men to put in front of a traumatized witness would only lead to a miscarriage of justice," added Karen Newirth, Koonce's attorney.
Rocah's Conviction Review Unit 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 following a federal corruption sting.
"It was a very shaky ID situation," said Kenneth Kaufmann, Koonce's attorney from the original trial. "And I remember jumping up and down at the suppression hearing and making all the noises I'm supposed to make and it didn't work and he got convicted. And it was devastating."
The detective's lies and "highly suggestive" photo identification techniques were part of a pattern of misconduct by detectives that deprived Koonce of a fair trial.
"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," Rocah said in a statement.
After being released, Koonce ran a successful extermination business and raised six children, including Malcolm Koonce, a defensive end for the Las Vegas Raiders and another son Dejuan Koonce, a retired New York State Trooper who was assigned to protective details for Gov. Kathy Hochul and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
"I wanted to be a lawyer first," acknowledged Dejuan Koonce. "I wanted to be a lawyer to get my dad out of jail. But then I became a cop because I realized instead of being part of the problem you can be part of the solution. And you can lead by example."
Recently, the Westchester DA's office has focused on reviewing past convictions, especially from Mount Vernon.
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