Mack, 72, served more than seven years in New York prison after a jury found him guilty of a 1975 rape of a high school girl in Greenburgh and a related weapons charge, according to the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office.
After opening a review of Mack’s claim to innocence last year, the district attorney’s office conducted DNA testing that “conclusively excluded” Mack as the rapist and also found that the initial investigation and prosecution relied on eyewitness identifications that were “tainted by problematic and suggestive procedures used by the police,” the office said in a release.
Mack, whose exoneration fell on his 72nd birthday, said that he never lost hope that his innocence would be proven.
“Today has been a long time coming. 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,” Mack said in a statement provided by the Innocence Project, an organization that works to exonerate people who are wrongfully convicted and brought Mack’s case to the DA.
“Now the truth has come to light and I can finally breathe. I am finally free,” he said.
Mack is a Vietnam War veteran and has lived with his wife in South Carolina for nearly 21 years, according to the Innocence Project.
He said the wrongful conviction irrevocably impacted his life.
“It changed the course of my life — everything from where I lived to my relationship with my family,” Mack said.
Based on its knowledge of similar cases, the Innocence Project said Mack’s wrongful conviction is the longest to be overturned based on new DNA evidence.
Investigators were able to match the new DNA test results to a Westchester man who had been convicted of a separate rape in 1975 and another sex crime in 2004, the district attorney’s office said.
When interviewed by an investigator, the man confessed to the 1975 Greenburgh rape, the release said.
Due to New York’s statute of limitations the new suspect cannot be prosecuted for the 1975 crime, but he is currently in custody and being prosecuted for failing to register as a sex offender related to the 2004 sex crime, according to the district attorney’s office.
Westchester County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah credited the discovery of Mack’s innocence to his “unwavering strength fighting to clear his name for almost 50 years.”
“This exoneration confirms that wrongful convictions are not only harmful to the wrongly convicted but also make us all less safe,” Rocah said in a statement last week.
The 1975 case
On May 22, 1975, a man held two high school girls at gunpoint and tied them up in a wooded area of Greenburgh, New York, according to the Innocence Project.
The man raped one of the girls twice before fleeing the scene, leaving the other girl to break free and run to a nearby school where a teacher called the police, the organization said.
The Greenburgh Police Department searched for a suspect described as a Black man in his early 20s, with close cropped hair and a clean shave, carrying a handgun and wearing black pants, a tan jacket, a black hat with a white brim and a gold earring in his left ear, according to the Innocence Project.
About two hours after the rape, a police officer pulled over and arrested Mack, who was wearing a black fedora and a gold earring in his left ear.
The officer said he found a revolver in Mack’s car and that Mack fit the suspect description, though his clothing did not match the victims’ description, according to the Innocence Project.
The victims, one of which was legally blind, later identified Mack through a series of “problematic identification procedures,” including photo arrays and lineups, according to the Innocence Project.
“Eyewitness misidentification, as in this case, is the leading contributing factor of wrongful convictions and has contributed to 64% of the Innocence Project’s 245 exonerations and releases,” the organization said.
A study of more than 3,000 exonerations since 1989 showed that Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes, according to a 2022 report by the National Registry of Exonerations."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
—————————————————————————————————
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
------------------------------------------------------------------
YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
-----------------------------------------------
