Jeffrey Mark Deskovic (born October 27, 1973)[1] is an American attorney from Peekskill, New York known for freeing the wrongly convicted.
In 1990, at the age of 17, he was convicted of raping, beating, and strangling his Peekskill High School classmate, Angela Correa, who was 15 at the time of the murder.
During a months-long investigation, which included extensive interrogations, he made a false confession that was immediately withdrawn, but became the basis for his conviction.
In 2006, with support by the Innocence Project, crime scene DNA testing led to Steven Cunningham, who was serving time for subsequent murder committed in the same fashion.
Deskovic later said that, under coercion, he made a false confession, fabricating an account based on crime scene information fed to him by police officers during their leading questions in the course of the interrogation.
They were apparently convinced by testimony from Peekskill police detective Daniel Stephens that the young man had confessed to the crime.
[6] A subsequent independent review of the case, written by retired judges Leslie Crocker Snyder and Peter J. McQuillan, along with former Staten Island D.A.
William L. Murphy; and Richard Joselson of Legal Aid, criticized police and the former prosecutor for failure to pursue other leads and for downplaying the DNA evidence that led to Deskovic's exoneration.
According to the report, errors were made throughout the entire case, including tunnel vision by both police and the previous prosecutor, along with reliance on profiling which turned out to be completely incorrect, followed by deliberate downplaying of the DNA evidence that ultimately proved Deskovic was innocent.