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Jeffrey Deskovic

State: New York
Incident Date: 11/15/89
 Age at Arrest: 16
 Conviction Date: 1990
 Age when Exonerated: 33
 Exonerated Date: 10/02/06
 Time Served: 16 years
 Conviction: Rape and murder
 False Confession: True
 Implicated by Another Youth: False
Details

"The police tactics in dealing with Deskovic did not take adequate account of his youth, naïveté, inexperience with the justice system and psychological vulnerabilities.” So read the Westchester County District Attorney’s Report after Jeffrey Deskovic was exonerated by DNA evidence nearly sixteen years after he was first accused of murder. Deskovic falsely confessed at age sixteen after undergoing several aggressive police interviews and interrogations; by the end of his final interrogation, he was lying beneath the interrogation room table in the fetal position, weeping. Even though DNA evidence excluded him as the perpetrator, Jeffrey was convicted based on his confession. He was exonerated after his attorneys compared the DNA evidence against a new state DNA database and matched it to a convicted murderer, Steven Cunningham, who upon questioning confessed to the crime.
Before Wrongful Conviction:


Post Exoneration: