Innocent 72-year-old deacon spent nearly 50 years convicted of rape charge, suit says
An innocent man accused of raping a teenage girl spent 47 years wrongfully convicted in New York, where he was sentenced to prison, his attorneys said.
Leonard Mack was exonerated at age 72 in September 2023, after evidence from the 1975 crime scene was revisited and revealed he had no part in the crime, according to the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, McClatchy News reported.
His exoneration marks the longest wrongful conviction to be overturned in the U.S. as a result of DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project.
Mack was a 23-year-old Vietnam War veteran and father of two when police in Greenburgh, New York, arrested him in connection with kidnapping two teens and raping one of them, a new federal lawsuit filed on his behalf says.
Authorities had been searching for a Black suspect in his early 20s who was wearing a tan jacket, dark colored pants and a gold earring in Greenburgh, a town made up of mostly white residents at the time, according to a complaint filed Nov. 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
According to the complaint, Mack was wearing a yellow sleeveless tank top and blue checkered pants when he was pulled over in Greenburgh, about a 25-mile drive northeast from New York City, and taken into custody.
Officers stopped him “because he is Black, despite not otherwise matching the description of the attacker,” the complaint says.
He was framed by law enforcement officials, according to the complaint.
Now Mack, who lives near Columbia, South Carolina, where he’s an ordained deacon, is suing several parties over his wrongful conviction, according to a Nov. 25 news release issued by civil rights law firm Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger LLP, which represents him.
“Justice has been a long time coming, and this lawsuit brings me one step closer,” Mack said in a statement.
The lawsuit was filed against Westchester County, a county investigator, the town of Greenburgh and a Greenburgh police lieutenant. The estates of two deceased county employees, and 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 of the firm, said in a statement.
“Mr. Mack’s conviction was the product of overt racism and forensic fraud,” Freudenberger added.
Westchester County officials didn’t respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment Nov. 25.
Greenburgh town supervisor Paul Feiner told McClatchy News via email on Nov. 25 that Mack’s arrest occurred before he was elected to his position 33 years ago, and “before most current town officials held their current offices.”
He said he isn’t aware of any current town employees who “were around during the arrest” and that the town is “reviewing the lawsuit with our attorneys and will be involved in the discovery process.”
DNA testing proves Mack’s innocence
Hours before Mack’s arrest, two high school students were held at gunpoint and forced into the woods in Greenburgh where they were tied, gagged and blindfolded, according to the district attorney’s office.
The suspect raped one student twice and tried to sexually assault the other girl, prosecutors said.
Following Mack’s arrest, he was convicted of first-degree rape and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon — and sentenced April 27, 1976, to serve up to 15 years in prison, according to officials.
He was released after serving seven and a half years, according to his attorneys, who said he’s always maintained he was innocent.
After the Innocence Project asked the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office to review Mack’s case in 2022, the office said it found “eyewitness identifications were tainted by problematic and suggestive procedures used by the police.”
Preserved evidence from the 1975 rape was tested and Mack’s DNA didn’t match the suspect’s DNA, according to the office.
Instead, testing implicated another man who was convicted in a separate rape case two weeks after Mack’s arrest, officials said. This man was convicted of a sex crime in Greenburgh in 2004, officials said
When the district attorney’s office revisited the 1975 Greenburgh rape case, the man confessed to being responsible, officials said. However, he could not be prosecuted due to state statute of limitations, according to officials.
The complaint identifies the man as Robert Goods.
Goods was in custody for not registering as a sex offender in connection with the 2004 sex crime when Mack was exonerated, according to officials.
Goods has been sentenced to one year in jail in relation to not registering as a sex offender, The Journal News reported in May.
Information regarding his legal representation wasn’t immediately available.
Mack shouldn’t have been prosecuted
The lawsuit argues all the evidence used to convict Mack was “fabricated,” including “highly suggestive identification procedures” conducted by police.
“(Mack) did not look like” Goods, “had no interactions with the victims, had a corroborated alibi for the time of the crime and was excluded by serological evidence as the rapist before trial,” the complaint says.
Mack’s convictions were officially overturned by Justice Anne Minihan on Sept. 5, 2023, the National Registry of Exonerations reports.
Mack, whose lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in damages and demands a jury trial, wants to help other veterans, especially veterans wrongfully convicted and exonerated, according to his attorneys.
“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,” Freudenberger said.
This story was originally published November 26, 2024 at 7:56 AM with the headline "Innocent 72-year-old deacon spent nearly 50 years convicted of rape charge, suit says."
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