Leonard Mack, Exonerated After 47 Years, Sues Over Wrongful Conviction

“His Innocence Was Apparent From the Beginning,” Lawsuit Charges

(NEW YORK, NY) — The national civil rights law firm Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger, LLP (NSBHF) today filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit on behalf of Leonard Mack, whose 1976 conviction for rape is the longest to be overturned by DNA evidence.

Mack, a Black Vietnam War veteran, was 23 years old when he was wrongly arrested and charged with rape in the largely white community of Greenburgh, New York.  At the time of the arrest, he was studying to obtain a GED and had a small child and a newborn. By the time he was exonerated in September 2023, he was 72 years old and had spent over 47 years living with the stigma of a sexual assault conviction for a crime he did not commit. He spent nearly eight years in prison followed by approximately two-and-a-half years on parole.

“We can’t undo the tremendous harm of a wrongful conviction that stood for nearly half a century, but today we can seek justice and accountability for Leonard Mack,” said Emma Freudenberger, a partner with NSBHF. “Mr. Mack’s conviction was the product of overt racism and forensic fraud. The police who framed him and the county’s crime lab analyst that stood in the way of the truth, must now answer for their actions—as must the agencies that employed them.”

During his seven-and-a-half years of incarceration and in the four decades that followed, Mack never wavered in proclaiming his innocence. His prison record made it difficult to maintain employment, and the U.S. Army severely reduced Mack’s disability benefits due to his conviction.

“Justice has been a long time coming, and this lawsuit brings me one step closer,” said Mack. An ordained deacon and a resident of South Carolina, where he has lived with his wife for the past two decades, he is on a mission to assist other veterans, particularly those who have also been wrongly convicted and exonerated.

Mack was arrested in March 1975 after two teenage girls in Greenburgh, New York reported being kidnapped and tied up at gunpoint by a Black man, who raped one of them. Mack had an alibi involving several witnesses and apart from being Black did not match the description of the assailant. Nonetheless, police fabricated false identifications of Mack.

While DNA testing was not available at the time of trial, lab tests “excluded Mack as the source of the semen left by the rapist—and should have ended the prosecution before the trial,” according to today’s complaint.  But the lab analyst, Marie Felgenhauer, deliberately misrepresented her findings to suggest that Mr. Mack “could have” been the source of the semen.  As a result of the fabricated identifications and false forensic testimony, Mack was convicted on March 29, 1976, and sentenced to seven-and-a-half to 15 years in prison.

From the outset of the case, and for the 47 years before his exoneration, Mack always maintained his innocence.  But it wasn’t until 2023 – with the assistance of the Innocence Project and the Conviction Review Unit of the Office of the District Attorney for Westchester County – that the remaining physical evidence from the case was submitted for DNA testing. The testing not only exonerated Mack but also identified the actual rapist, who confessed to being the lone perpetrator of the horrific assault on the young women.

In agreeing to vacate Mack’s conviction, the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office acknowledged that “‘in this case the criminal justice system failed to protect an innocent man’ and apologized for the ‘incalculable damage and collateral consequences’ in Mr. Mack’s life as a result of ‘this grave injustice’ and ‘absolute tragedy’,” according to the complaint.

Today’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for the violation of Mr. Mack’s federal and state constitutional rights.

Mr. Mack is represented by NSBHF partners Emma Freudenberger, Anna Benvenutti Hoffmann and Amelia Green, NSBHF staff attorney Christina Matthias and NSBHF Cochran Fellow Elsa Mota.

The defendants in the complaint are: Westchester County; the Town of Greenburgh, NY; Investigator Carol Kope, Lieutenant John Schachinger; Roger Stillman as Administrator of the Estate of Marie Felgenhauer; Judy Messina, as Administrator of the Estate of Lieutenant Raphael Garofano; James Fleming III as Administrator of the Estate of Officer James Fleming; “Jack Roe 1” (as yet unidentified) as Administrator of the Estate of Detective Robert Willard; and “Jack Roe 2” (as yet unidentified) as Administrator of the Estate of Detective Gerrard Holley.

The lawsuit, Mack v. Westchester County et al., Case 7:24-cv-08990, is available here.

Read coverage of the suit by Gothamist and by McClatchy Media.

Watch coverage by News 12 Long Island here.