Deskovic Civil Suit Against Putnam, Former Sheriff’s Investigator Underway
For a man that spent 16 years in prison—wrongly convicted in the homicide of former classmate—Jeffrey Deskovic sits inside a Bronx diner with a cheery disposition and light sense of humor.
After spending years of his life toiling away in a maximum-security prison in upstate New York, Deskovic knows he’s lost so much already, to continue to be angry would only hurt himself, and not the people he considers responsible for his wrongful time locked away.
“It’s not like if I was angry or bitter that I would somehow be adversely affecting the people responsible for what happen to me,” Deskovic said in an interview. “If I was, it might be a different thing, it might be a different outcome but in reality it won’t affect anyone else.”
While laughing now, you can bet Deskovic will be all business Tuesday as his 2007 federal civil rights lawsuit in which Putnam County and a former sheriff’s investigator are the only remaining defendants goes to trail and gets underway in federal Supreme Court in White Plains.
The former sheriff’s investigator, Daniel Stephens, administered a lie detector test back in 1990 that eventually led to a false admission of guilt from Deskovic. During his trial, he was found guilty.
Stephens is now one of three elected county coroners in Putnam.
He was finally exonerated and released in 2006 when the case was revisited and DNA evidence matched the actual murderer, finally freeing Deskovic.
“By that point I had lost track of my friends, by that point my family had become strangers to me,” he said. “I felt out of place being in the world.”
Deskovic was the main suspect in the rape and murder of a Peekskill High School classmate named Angela Correa on Nov. 5, 1989 and was interviewed several times until he was brought up to Stephen’s office in Brewster for a lie detector test.
Deskovic blames much of his wrongful conviction on Stephens and the accusations against him in the lawsuit are damning. The suit claims the lie detector test conducted on Jan. 25 1990 by Stephens included tactics meant to “trick, deceive, confuse, and intimidate” him.
According to the suit, Stephens also attributed statements to Deskovic that Deskovic claims he never made. The suit states Stephens prepared documentation that falsely represented facts that make it seem that Deskovic has independent knowledge of certain elements the crime, rather than what was told to him by the investigators.
One false statement Stephens made that led to the conviction the suit claimed, is that Deskovic said the killer may not have ejaculated when the victim was raped. That became important because DNA evidence on the body did not match Deskovic, but prosecutors argued she had sex consensually with another person before she was raped and killed by Deskovic.
Deskovic has settle with multiple defendants named in that 2007 lawsuit. He received $6.5 million from Westchester and $5.4 million from Peekskill. He also sued and settled with New York for false improvement for $1.8 million. Whether he wins or loses this case against Putnam, an agreement is in place to pay Deskovic an undisclosed amount of money, the amount depending if he wins or loses.
While there is a time he was “pretty confident he was going to die in prison,” Deskovic now runs a non-profit that works on freeing the wrongly convicted called the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice. He graduated from Mercy College with a bachelor’s degree and then earned a masters degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
With the money Deskovic has made from settlements, he’s been able to solely focus on his foundation. The foundation fights to free the innocent that are locked up and doesn’t necessarily singularly rely on DNA evidence, even if that’s what ultimately freed Deskovic. It also helps those people released reintegrate back into society by providing housing and helping them find a job.
“I feel like I’m trying to take a silver lining out of what happen to me,” Deskovic said. “And the foundation is one way that I actualize it. I intend on the foundation being my legacy.”
