Allison Kilkenny: Interview w/ Man Who Spent 16 Years in Jail Because Sotomayor Denied His Appeal

Jeffrey Deskovic served 16 years in prison for a murder and rape he did not commit. At the age of 16, he was arrested based upon a coerced false confession obtained from a police interrogation that lasted for over seven hours. Despite the presence of strong DNA evidence that proved his innocence, a coerced confession, and proof of prosecutorial misconduct, Deskovic could not get his sentence overturned, even when he had the supposed "empathetic" ear of Sonia Sotomayor.

His case highlights some startling flaws in the US court and prison system, and a potential weakness in Sotomayor's judicial style: her history of preferring procedure over innocence. Deskovic's failed attempts to offer his testimony at Sotomayor's confirmation hearing also illustrate the politicization of the process in which Democratic Senators may be suppressing his testimony in order to provide smooth transition for Sotomayor to ascend to the Supreme Court.

It all started when the police took a 16-year-old Deskovic out of school and drove him out of county in order to interrogate him about his supposed involvement in the murder/rape, Deskovic explained to me during our phone interview. His parents had no idea he was in police custody. Deskovic was kept in a small room for over seven hours where he was hooked up to a polygraph machine and repeatedly threatened by the police.

I wasn't given anything to eat the entire time I was there... The police played good cop-bad cop. They used all kinds of scare tactics: they raised their voices at me, they invaded my personal space. As each hour passed by, my fear increased in proportion to the time I was there. Towards the end, the polygrapher said to me, "What do you mean you didn't do it? You just told us in the test that you did. We just want you to verbally confirm it."

The polygrapher was lying, but Deskovic had no way of knowing that.

At that point, the officer who was pretending to be my friend entered the room, and he told me the other officers were going to harm me, and that he was holding them off, but that he couldn't do so indefinitely. He said I had to help myself, and he added that if I did as they wanted, not only would they stop what they were doing, but that I could go home afterwards. I was being young - naïve - you know, 16-years-old, not thinking about the long-term implications, but instead being concerned with my own personal safety - I took the out that was being offered, and I made up a story based upon the information they fed me during the course of the investigation.

He was convicted despite a negative DNA test that showed that semen found in the victim did not match Deskovic's sample. On the day of his sentencing, Deskovic referred to the DNA test. The judge responded (on record): "Maybe you are innocent," before sentencing him instead of overturning the verdict. Deskovic tried to appeal this decision several times. First, he appealed to the Appellate Division where his request was denied. He then went to the Court of Appeals, New York State's highest court, which also refused to hear his case. Deskovic then filed a Habeas Corpus petition in the federal court, arguing that DNA evidence proved his innocence and his confession was coerced, which violated his Fifth Amendment rights. Some confusion emerged due to new guidelines stated by the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that changed the deadline for petitions. Deskovic's attorney asked a court clerk if the petition had to be filed by the cut-off date, or if it could be postmarked. The clerk said it could be postmarked, which was false. Deskovic's petition arrived four days too late.

[Allison is progressive journalist with Huffington Post, and Citizen Radio, read the full article at link]