Last week, in a courtroom in Westchester County, 72-year-old Leonard Mack got something he'd waited nearly 50 years for, an apology from a district attorney and a judge's order exonerating him for a rape he did not commit.
An investigation by the Innocence Project and the Westchester district attorney's Conviction Review Unit led to the dramatic court appearance on Sept. 5. Amanda Wallwin, senior policy advocate with the Innocence Project, discussed the case with All Things Considered host Sean Carlson. What follows is a transcript of their discussion, edited for length and clarity.
Hey Amanda, welcome to WNYC.
Hi, thanks so much for having me.
This case is believed to be the oldest conviction to be overturned based on new DNA evidence. Can you tell us a bit about Leonard Mack and what happened in his case?
Sure. Leonard Mack, a Vietnam veteran, was arrested, prosecuted and, ultimately, convicted for a rape he didn't commit back in 1975.
Two young women were walking home from high school in Greenburgh, Westchester County, when they were attacked, bound, and one of them was raped while the other escaped and called the police. Based on the victim's description, police were on the lookout for a Black man in his early 20s wearing a gold earring and a fedora.
Leonard Mack, 72, during an appearance in a Westchester County courtroom on Sept. 5. He received a hug from Supreme Court Justice Anne Minihan, who formally vacated Mack's 1976 wrongful conviction for rape.
Mr. Mack was pulled over based on that description, and even though his hat wasn't quite right and the rest of his clothes didn't match what the victims had described, he was subjected to a series of suggestive eyewitness identification procedures. Mr. Mack was convicted in 1976, and he spent seven and a half years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Leonard Mack, 72, celebrated his birthday on Sept. 5, the same day a state judge vacated his wrongful 1976 rape conviction.
When his case came to the attention of our attorneys at the Innocence Project, we were able to conduct DNA testing on some remaining evidence from the case and it proved conclusively that Mr. Mack wasn't the perpetrator. In fact, we submitted the DNA profile to the national database and we got a hit.
And when the person identified in the database search was asked about the crime, he confessed. However, because the statute of limitations for sexual assault was only five years at the time the crime was committed, the man cannot be prosecuted.
Let's talk more about some of the things that led to Mr. Mack's conviction. So much of that conviction was a lot of what you see in wrongful conviction cases, a big one being eyewitness misidentification. Can you tell us more about that?
Yeah, sure. In fact, in New York, 36% of wrongful convictions involve a mistaken witness ID. And in this case in particular, the behavior of law enforcement encouraged the multiple misidentifications. Firstly, Mr. Mack didn't match the description of the perpetrator. And when one of the girls pointed out that the clothes were wrong, law enforcement had Mr. Mack change into clothes that the victim picked out and then presented him again for identification.
Leonard Mack at Elmira Correctional Facility in 1978.
In a photo array, Mr. Mack's photo was noticeably different from all the other photos. His was the only one showing his face and clothing. Finally, one of the girls was legally blind, and she had difficulty differentiating between the people in the photo array, so the police instead allowed her to view Mr. Mack through a one-way mirror with the other victim in the room, who told her that's him.
When that girl still couldn't identify him, Mr. Mack was asked to say something that the attacker had said through a door. Based on that, the girl identified Mr. Mack. And, to be clear, none of this is best practice for eyewitness identification.
I know your office has said that racial bias played a part here, too, right?
Yeah, I mean, of course, even though the evidence pointed away from Mr. Mack as the perpetrator, police didn't make any efforts to identify another suspect. And when they were asked why they didn't do a full lineup for eyewitness identification, they said that it wouldn't be feasible to put together a lineup of Black suspects in a basically white town.
And it's worth pointing out that in half of the counties of New York, there's never been a single exoneration. Not all prosecutors are willing to do this work at all.
This kind of tunnel vision is a known consequence of implicit racial bias, and we see it play out in New York. Fifteen percent of the population is Black, but Black people make up 58% of the wrongfully convicted. And these statistics are driven at least in part by these kinds of investigations that are tainted with racial bias.
How do we prevent it from happening in the first place, if we do have all of this knowledge about what does happen?
Sure, we can strengthen our eyewitness ID laws to also regulate show ups, where a police officer presents a single suspect to a victim or witness. What we saw in Mr. Mack's case was that best practices weren't used, and that affected the ultimate outcome.
And, most importantly, New York's current post conviction statute is way behind much of the rest of the country. Right now, there's no pathway through the courts for exoneration for the majority of wrongfully convicted New Yorkers. Most exonerations, like Mr. Mack's, occur with prosecutor cooperation. So if the prosecutor in your county isn't interested in revisiting your conviction, that's the end of the road.
Leonard Mack and his wife, Mary, outside the courthouse in White Plains, on Sept. 5.
And it's worth pointing out that in half of the counties of New York, there's never been a single exoneration. Not all prosecutors are willing to do this work at all. This past session, the Legislature passed a bill to address that. It's called the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act, and it's on Gov. Kathy Hochul's desk right now.
Enacting that legislation is the most important thing we can do to make sure that there aren't more Mr. Macs out there waiting for decades to demonstrate their innocence.
Amanda Wallwin is a senior policy advocate for the Innocence Project. Amanda, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you.
