Leonard Mack

The Crime

On May 22, 1975, a 17-year-old high school student reported that she had been sexually assaulted on her way home from school in Greenburgh, New York. The girl said that she and a female friend were in a wooded area near Woodlands High School at about 3:15 p.m. when a man with a gun approached. They were blindfolded, gagged and bound at their wrists and ankles. He raped the 17-year-old. Her friend managed to break free and escape.

The students said the assailant was a Black man in his early 20s, clean-shaven, with close-cropped hair. They said he wore a black hat with a white brim, black pants, and a tan jacket, and he had a gold earring in his left ear. They said he had a .22- or .32-caliber gun.

About two hours later, Officer James Fleming of the Westchester County Parkway Police pulled over a car driven by 23-year-old Leonard Mack because he fit the teenagers’ description.

At the time, Mr. Mack was a veteran of the Vietnam War and lived in New Rochelle, in southern Westchester County. Although Mr. Mack was wearing a black Fedora and had a gold earring in his left ear, his clothing did not match the description provided by the two teenagers. Mr. Mack told Officer Fleming he wasn’t involved in any assault and had been with his girlfriend at the time. Officer Fleming searched Mr. Mack’s car and arrested him after finding a .22-caliber revolver in the trunk. 

The student who had not been raped was brought to the location of the traffic stop where she viewed Mr. Mack, who was in handcuffs and surrounded by Fleming and six police cars. After asking police to reposition Mr. Mack, she identified him as the assailant. 

Later, at the Greenburgh Police Department, she viewed a photo array of seven Black men and selected Mr. Mack’s photograph as the attacker. In the array, Mr. Mack’s photo was distinctive. It showed his clothing, and  a calendar displaying May 1975 was visible in the background. 

Later that night, the girl went to the Parkway Police station and viewed Mr. Mack through a one-way mirror. Officer Fleming would later testify that it was not “feasible” to put together a live line-up of Black men because Greenburgh was “basically white.” The girl told police that Mr. Mack was wearing the wrong clothes, and they showed her clothing options and allowed her to pick out other clothes for Mr. Mack to wear. She then identified Mr. Mack.

After the girl who was raped left the hospital, she went to the Greenburgh police station. The girl was legally blind and said she could not detect gender from a distance beyond 10 feet and could not see the color of a person’s clothing from beyond five feet. She said she thought she recognized Mr. Mack’s shirt in his photo but wasn’t sure.

The girl then went to the Parkway Police headquarters where she viewed Mr. Mack through the one-way mirror. Her friend also was present and said, “That’s him.” The rape survivor could not identify Mr. Mack with certainty and asked if she could hear his voice. The police had Mr. Mack say, “Don’t scream, don’t turn around or I’ll kill you.” Based on this, the girl identified Mr. Mack as the assailant.

Mr. Mack was charged with first-degree rape and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon. 

The Trial

In March 1976, Mr. Mack went to trial in Westchester County Supreme Court. The two teenagers, who both were Black, testified in court that Mr. Mack was the man who assaulted them in the woods. 

State investigators had tested the rape survivor’s underwear and a vaginal swab and found biological material on the underwear that tested positive for acid phosphatase, a marker for the presence of semen. 

Based on further testing, the lab’s technicians concluded that the survivor was a non-secretor, one of a small percentage of people who did not secrete blood type antigens into their bodily fluids. Therefore, she could not be the source of the antigens detected in the biological material. The State did not submit the report into evidence and objected when Mr. Mack’s attorney moved to present expert testimony on the results, claiming a lack of foundation for the testimony. 

Dr. Alexander Wiener, with the Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York City, testified that Mr. Mack’s blood type was excluded from the biological material.

Mr. Mack’s girlfriend and two mechanics who had looked at his car on the afternoon of the attack testified that Mr. Mack was elsewhere at the time. Mr. Mack also testified and denied any involvement. 

In rebuttal, a forensic scientist from Westchester County testified incorrectly that a person could be a secretor for some bodily fluids but not others, giving the impression that the survivor could have been the source of the biological evidence.

The jury convicted Mr. Mack on all charges on March 29, 1976. He was sentenced to 7½ to 15 years in prison.

Mr. Mack was released on parole on Dec. 13, 1982. 

The Exoneration

In 2019, Mr. Mack contacted the Innocence Project and asked for help. His case was accepted in May 2022 and six months later, the Westchester County District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU) agreed to review Mr. Mack’s claim of innocence. 

The CRU’s investigation found that the eyewitness identifications were “tainted by problematic and suggestive procedures used by the police.”

Separately, the CRU located the survivor’s underwear and Mr. Mack’s underwear. The Westchester County Department of Laboratories and Research tested this evidence and excluded Mr.  Mack as the source of the DNA on the survivor’s underwear. The DNA evidence was then uploaded to the state and local DNA database. 

The search yielded a hit on a man who was convicted of a burglary and rape in Queens that occurred weeks after this crime. The man also had a 2004 conviction for burglary and sexual assault of a woman in Westchester County. During an interview with an investigator with the district attorney’s office, the man confessed to the Greenburgh rape. Because the statute of limitations had expired, he could not be prosecuted.

On Aug. 31, 2023, Westchester County District Attorney Miriam Rocah filed a motion asking a judge to vacate Mr. Mack’s convictions. On Sept. 5, 2023, Westchester County Supreme Court Justice Anne Minihan vacated Mr. Mack’s convictions and dismissed the charges. 

At the time, the duration of Mr. Mack’s wrongful conviction — more than 48 years — was the longest in U.S. history to be overturned by DNA evidence.