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An American was innocently imprisoned for seven years after he was convicted in 1976 (symbolic image)
Photo: Klaus-Dietmar Gabbert / picture alliance/dpa
47 years after his conviction and innocent in prison for more than seven years, an African-American man in upstate New York has been rehabilitated on the basis of new DNA evidence. DNA evidence, which was not available at the time, had definitively ruled out the now 72-year-old Leonard Mack as the perpetrator and identified a convicted sex offender who has now confessed to the rape, said the Westchester County District Attorney's Office.
In 1975, a teenager was raped on her way home from school. The police ordered a manhunt for a suspected black man – and arrested a short time later the African-American Mack in Greenburgh in the US state of New York. A year later, he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for rape and illegal possession of weapons. After that, Mack had struggled for decades to be recognized as innocent.
It was the "longest unjust conviction in U.S. history known to the Innocent Project, which was overturned by DNA evidence," the prosecution said. The Innocent Project is an organization that strives to clarify U.S. miscarriages of justice. Mack reacted to the release by saying, "Now I can finally say that I am free." The real perpetrator, despite his confession, can no longer be convicted of rape because of the statute of limitations.
According to figures from the National Register of Releases, more than 1989 wrongfully convicted people have been acquitted on DNA evidence since 570. 35 of them had been threatened with the death penalty before they were exonerated. According to experts, African Americans have a greater risk of being wrongly convicted than whites.
him/AFP