After an innocent man was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl, he spent 47 years wrongfully convicted of the crime. Now, Leonard Mack is suing New York’s Westchester County District, the town of Greenburgh and several people who he claims played a role in his wrongful arrest and incarceration.
According to the Innocence Project, Mack’s exoneration marks the longest wrongful conviction to be overturned in the U.S. as a result of DNA evidence. He was exonerated in September at age 72.
The Vietnam veteran and father of two spent nearly eight years in prison for the rape. Mack was just 23 in 1975 when he was arrested by police in Greenburgh in connection with kidnapping two teens and raping one of them, per the Miami Herald.
After the arrest, he was convicted of first-degree rape and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. He was sentenced in 1976 to serve up to 15 years in prison. He ultimately was released after serving seven and a half years, per his attorneys.
The Innocence Project requested that the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office to review Mack’s case in 2022. This led to the office discovering eyewitness identifications being “tainted by problematic and suggestive procedures used by the police.”
Additionally, evidence from the 1975 rape was tested and Mack’s DNA didn’t match the suspect’s DNA, according to the office. Instead, it actually implicated another man who was convicted in a separate rape case two weeks after Mack’s arrest.
Mack, an ordained deacon who currently resides near Columbia, S.C., is now suing several parties over his wrongful conviction.
“Justice has been a long time coming, and this lawsuit brings me one step closer,” he explained in a statement last month from his law firm Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger LLP.
The lawsuit was filed against Westchester County, the town of Greenburgh, a county investigator and a Greenburgh police lieutenant. The estates of two deceased county employees as well as the estates of three Greenburgh Police Department officers are also named as defendants.
“We can’t undo the tremendous harm of a wrongful conviction that stood for nearly half a century, but today we can seek justice and accountability for Leonard Mack,” Emma Freudenberger, a partner with NSBHF, stated.
“Mr. Mack’s conviction was the product of overt racism and forensic fraud. The police who framed him and the county’s crime lab analyst that stood in the way of the truth, must now answer for their actions—as must the agencies that employed them.”
Per News 12 The Bronx, Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner released the following statement: “We are reviewing the lawsuit with our attorneys and will be involved in the discovery process gathering more information.”