CROOKED NY CONVICTION LEADS TO ANOTHER MURDER

See a previous report here on Sept. 25th.. The crooked police who put Deskovic away now have even more to answer for. Everybody involved is running for cover, of course

Mistakes in the Jeffrey Deskovic case continue to compound misery in retrospect: While the youth was in prison more than a dozen years ago, wrongly convicted in the slaying of Peekskill high classmate Angela Correa, the admitted real assailant was busy killing someone else. That reality, made plain by staff writer Jonathan Bandler's enterprising reporting yesterday and today, adds new impetus for an investigation into what went wrong in the Deskovic case.

Sleuthing by Bandler led to Eastern Correctional Facility and inmate Steven Cunningham, who is serving a life sentence in the April 1993 slaying of Peekskill schoolteacher Patricia Morrison; a letter Bandler sent Cunningham, 46, resulted in the dramatic jailhouse interview in which Cunningham confessed to the earlier murder of Correa, killed Nov. 15, 1989.

When Deskovic's sham, 1990 conviction was overturned two weeks ago, the authorities explained that someone already in prison for murder had confessed to the crime; they refused to say who. Bandler's work fills in that detail, serves up a most-regrettable timeline, and drives home a point first suggested publicly by Deskovic. In a Sunday article, he speculated on whether the then-mystery killer had struck before or after Correa was slain.

"That would mean if they (police and prosecutors involved in his conviction) did their jobs and got him when they should have, someone might have been saved," said Deskovic, 32. He was convicted in 1990, on the strength of a false confession and in spite of DNA evidence that pointed elsewhere. He was cleared two weeks ago, after Innocence Project lawyers prevailed upon DiFiore to conduct new DNA testing; that led to a DNA "hit" on an imprisoned suspect, who allegedly confessed to the Correa killing when authorities confronted him with the new DNA evidence.

We called for outside investigators to review the Deskovic case, after DiFiore said the matter had been "righteously" investigated and prosecuted long ago; we think the known facts and resulting injustice strongly suggest otherwise. We have said that Deskovic and Correa and the people of New York deserved more inquiry into what went wrong. We now add Morrison, who was a mother of three, to that list.

If Westchester won't order up the outside inquiry injustice demands, perhaps Albany will — someday. Pending in the Assembly is a bill from Michael Gianaris, D-Queens, and co-sponsored by Adam Bradley, D-White Plains, that would establish a commission to investigate confirmed instances of wrongful conviction and issue reports and recommendations, so mistakes can be avoided in future cases. "This happens a lot more frequently than anyone cares to admit or realizes," said Gianaris. "Obviously, when an innocent person gets convicted, one would hope that something went wrong" — meaning there is a lesson to be learned. Gianaris' bill has been pending in the Assembly since February 2005; it is worthy of consideration by the full Legislature.

Report here



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