The Advocate
Richard Blassberg

Jeffrey Deskovic Speaks Out Against The Death Penalty

Jeffrey Deskovic, 34, who spent sixteen years behind bars for a rape and murder Peeksill Police and Westchester Prosecutors knew very well he didn’t commit, spent last Monday and Tuesday in Albany, in the company of other Anti-Death Penalty advocates, in an effort to educate and persuade state legislators not to bring back the Death Penalty in New York. The group, that included a Catholic bishop, and the mother of a female murder victim, held a press conference at the State House, and also appeared before the Albany County legislature, which nevertheless, voted 14 to 5 to send a Pro-Death Penalty resolution to the State Senate.

Deskovic had told the county legislators, “As a state we have had twenty-six, count them, twenty-six wrongful convictions that were overturned. We have had, as a nation, one hundred twenty-three exonerations for persons who were on death row.

One of them was days from execution when he was released, and the conditions that led to these wrongfully accused person’s imprisonment persist today.”

Those opposed to the death penalty have argued for years that it has not been a deterrent to serious crime, and that it serves no useful purpose for the families of victims. While agreeing with the traditional arguments in opposition, Deskovic has strongly emphasized that his own exoneration, and the exoneration of more than 200 other individuals by DNA evidence over the last thirteen years, many who had been convicted of death penalty-eligible crimes, is reason enough to recognize that many innocent individuals have been executed over the years, and many more will be if the death penalty were to be reinstated.

Mr. Deskovic is quick to point out that had he been just two years older, eighteen instead of sixteen, at the time of his coerced, false confession, he might very well have been executed under New York State’s old law, once having exhausted his appeals, and prior to the establishment of the State DNA Databank. The former Peekskill native was wrongfully, and maliciously prosecuted for the brutal rape and murder of 15-year-old Angela Correa, whose actual murderer was discovered doing time in prison for a second very similar killing.

Deskovic would have been freed almost ten years earlier except for former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s stubborn refusal, seven separate times, to permit a DNA comparison of semen found in the girl’s body, which did not match Deskovic’s DNA profile, with DNA profiles in the State Prison Databank.

Since emerging from prison last September Deskovic, who hopes to attend law school in the fall, has been finishing up several undergraduate courses towards his bachelor’s degree, at Mercy College. Yet he has found
the time to speak at more than 20 colleges, organizations, and gatherings, regarding the urgent need for legislation that will prohibit and punish the kind of prosecutorial misconduct he, and perhaps one third of all those in prison, incarcerated for crimes they did not commit, have been the victims of.

The Death Penalty, revived by George Pataki upon taking office in 1995, was declared “unconstitutional as enacted” in 2004. However, Eliot Spitzer has indicated his willingness to sign a bill that would execute convicted terrorists and cop killers. The State Assembly has consistently resisted ALL death penalty proposals advanced in the State Senate for the past three years.