 Jeffrey Koonce (Photo: Frank Becerra Jr./The Journal News)
Kenneth Stewart was outside, across the street from the club. He told police that he heard a shotgun blast and later saw three Black men running from the club. One of the men was wearing a red T-shirt and carrying a blue tote bag. Stewart said the men jumped into a light green Audi with New York plates and sped off.
Officers with the Mount Vernon Police Department (MVPD) responded to the robbery and interviewed witnesses at the scene. They did not document individual statements but instead consolidated the witness accounts into one report, which described the robbers as three Black men, about 17-18 years old. One robber was described as 5’9”, 135 pounds, with a red shirt and a sawed-off shotgun. The second was about 5’7”, slim, with dark clothes and a pistol. The third suspect was described as having short hair and a husky build.
Detectives James Garcia and Daniel Salottolo were assigned to investigate the robbery. On June 22, the officers took two witnesses to a New York Police Department precinct in the Bronx, just south of Mount Vernon, to look at mugshots and then drove the witnesses around the Edenwald Houses, a public-housing community on the northern edge of the Bronx. Neither witness made any identifications, and Salottolo would later testify that he kept no records of the trip.
Several days later, according to Salottolo, the Mount Vernon police received a tip that 18-year-old Paul Koonce might have been involved in the robbery. Salottolo would later testify that the tip said that Koonce was seen in a green Audi, that he had been committing robberies, and lived in the Edenwald Houses. The tip was not recorded in any police reports.
Koonce had no police record and no mugshot. But he had a brother, 24-year-old Jeffrey Koonce, whose photo was on file with the New York Police Department. Garcia and Salottolo created a six-pack photo array with Jeffrey’s photo and then asked Shuler to view the photos. On June 30, Shuler identified Jeffrey Koonce as the man who shot him.
Mount Vernon police arrested Koonce on June 30 at his apartment in New Rochelle, the city just east of Mount Vernon. The police then took him to the hospital, where Shuler was still in recovery. Shuler again identified Koonce as the person who shot him.
At the police station, Koonce told the police he had no involvement with the robbery. He said that at the time of the crime he was hanging out in front of his apartment building with several people: Samuel Guest, a neighbor; Brenda Johnson, Guest’s girlfriend; Robert Pryor, the building’s superintendent; and his brother, Paul, who had left at about 11:30 to work his shift at a bakery in the Bronx. Around midnight, Koonce and the three others drove into Manhattan and returned around 2:30 a.m.
A day after the arrest, Garcia applied for a search warrant of Koonce’s apartment to look for a “blue tote bag with white handles.” The search warrant was returned, with Garcia noting that no bag was found at the apartment.
Koonce lived with his girlfriend, Nadine Robinson. On the day of the search, she contacted the New Rochelle Police Department and said that a man named Ronald Deighan, who had keys to her apartment, had stolen several items, including a television and a large duffel bug. Another woman signed a statement that said she saw Deighan lugging around a large bag.
The New Rochelle police picked up Deighan on July 2, and he was later questioned by Salottolo and Garcia.
Deighan said in a sworn statement that Koonce had asked to borrow his blue tote bag on June 19, and that Koonce put a sawed-off shotgun in the bag. Deighan said that Koonce asked him to drive Koonce’s Ford LTD and follow him and Paul Koonce, who was driving a green Audi 5000. The brothers picked up a third man who had a “bulge” on his side, Deighan said.
Eventually, Deighan said, he realized what was about to happen, and he left the three men and drove the Ford back to Koonce’s apartment. A few hours later, Deighan said, he saw Koonce again. Koonce returned the blue tote bag and said Deighan was “wise” to have left when he did.
Paul Koonce was arrested on September 18, 1981, at his high school in the Bronx. Both he and Jeffrey Koonce were charged with armed robbery.
Prior to trial, Jeffrey Koonce’s attorney, Kenneth Kaufman, moved to suppress Shuler’s bedside identification, arguing that the show-up procedure used by the police officers was overly suggestive and prejudicial.
During a three-day hearing in October 1982, Salottolo testified about how Jeffrey Koonce became a suspect.
He said, “Through our investigation, the name had come up ‘Paul Koonce’ in that car, and also that they, meaning the brothers, had done robberies or been doing robberies in the area, and we went on the assumption that, you know, if one is involved, maybe the other is involved and, therefore, we went down and got the pictures.”
Salottolo also testified about the creation of the photo array that he showed to Shuler. He said he used five other pictures of young Black men, around 20 years old, all with a slight mustache and close-cropped hair. The state had given Kaufman the photo array during discovery, but he did not challenge its composition. Koonce would later say he did not see the array until years later.
Shuler testified that he had viewed only four photos—not six—in the array. (The photos were spread over two sheets.) He said that later, when the officers came to the hospital, they told him that they had the person Shuler had identified from the array. Koonce was in the hallway, and the officers cracked open the door so Shuler could take a look.
On February 16, 1983, Justice Henry Scudder of Westchester County Court ruled that Shuler’s show-up identification of Koonce was flawed and could not be used at trial. Shuler’s identification of Koonce from the photo array was valid, the judge ruled, which would allow Shuler to make an in-court identification of Koonce.
The joint trial of Jeffrey and Paul Koonce began on May 9, 1983.
Deighan, who had an extensive criminal record, could not be located. Four eyewitnesses testified about the robbery, but only Shuler identified Jeffrey Koonce as a participant.
Shuler testified that he was asleep with his back to the door when the robbers entered. The room was dark, and Shuler said he was shot from behind.
Another witness, Will Clark, had identified Paul Koonce prior to trial but was unable to make an in-court identification.
The state introduced the blue tote bag into evidence. Clark said it “looked like” the bag used in the robbery. Stewart said he wasn’t sure about the bag, but “it was a bag like this.” Shuler initially said the robbers used a duffel bag but later identified the blue tote bag as the bag used in the crime.
Salottolo testified that he and Garcia investigated Jeffrey Koonce’s alibi “to the extent where we were satisfied that it wasn’t believable.” He said that the police did not interview Guest, but failed to mention that another man, also named Guest, had apparently been questioned in error. He testified that he did interview the building superintendent. Salottolo could not recall the super’s name, and there were no records of this interview.
Salottolo also testified that he saw a blue tote bag at Jeffrey Koonce’s apartment at the time of the arrest. Salottolo was not asked why this potential evidence wasn’t seized then or secured prior to obtaining a search warrant.
Guest and Pryor testified that they were with the Koonces on the night of the robbery and that they went to Manhattan with Jeffrey around midnight and returned to New Rochelle at 2:30 a.m.
Jeffrey and Paul Koonce each testified and said they had no involvement with the robbery.
On May 19, 1983, the jury acquitted Paul Koonce and convicted Jeffrey Koonce of armed robbery. Jeffrey Koonce received a sentence of seven and a half to 15 years in prison.
While the jury deliberated, Koonce told his brother’s attorney that he was going out to get a cup of coffee. A few minutes later, the jury returned with its verdict. Koonce, who was out on bail, was not present. He was arrested on May 18, 1984, and later pled guilty to bail jumping. He received a sentence of one to three years in prison, to run concurrently with the armed robbery.
After his conviction, Koonce moved for a new trial, arguing that Shuler had misrepresented the high school he attended, which cast doubt on his credibility. That motion was denied. He later appealed, asserting there was insufficient evidence to sustain a conviction. An appellate court affirmed the conviction in 1988.
Koonce was paroled in August 1992.
On July 19, 1994, Garcia and Detective Robert Astorino, who had helped with the robbery investigation, pled guilty to federal theft and conspiracy charges. The FBI had been investigating corruption in the Mount Vernon Police Department and created a sting operation that caught the two officers stealing cash from an apartment where a purported Florida fugitive was said to be staying.
After Garcia’s plea, the FBI interviewed Koonce, who again said he had no involvement in the robbery. He said that he believed—but had no proof—that Garcia had paid Shuler to identify him. He said that after Shuler viewed him at the hospital, he asked Garcia, “Why me?” Garcia answered “Because you’re a warm body.”
Separately, Garcia’s methods had come under scrutiny in other cases. He arrested a man for robbery in 1984, even though the man’s car did not match the description of the getaway vehicle. Later, according to a lawsuit, Garcia misled court officials when he applied for an arrest warrant. Garcia also failed to investigate the man’s alibi. The man later sued Garcia and the Mount Vernon Police Department, receiving $25,000.
In a case from 1990, a judge in Westchester County said that Garcia “intentionally told falsehoods and omitted significant aspects of the events to which he testified” and that the “Court does not believe, in general, that it can rely on almost anything Detective Garcia had to say.”
In the spring of 2024, Koonce’s new attorney, Karen Newirth, and the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) of the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office began a reinvestigation of the case.
As part of the review, the CRU obtained the original photo array shown to Shuler. Koonce said he had never seen this evidence. The fillers did not appear to have been chosen to match the witness descriptions of the robbers. Instead, they were all potential suspects, men with arrests or convictions for area robberies. One of the fillers was Koonce’s older brother, Dudley, who had been released from prison in March 1981 after serving several years on an armed robbery conviction. In addition, Koonce’s photo was significantly larger than the other photos in the array.
An investigator interviewed Shuler. He remembered little about the robbery or the shooting, but said he did not remember seeing any of the robbers’ faces. Shuler said that after he was shot, he was “covered up” by adults.
The review also found a note in the prosecutor’s file that appeared to indicate that the police had interviewed the wrong Samuel Guest when checking on Koonce’s alibi. That Guest had a lengthy criminal record. By the time of the re-investigation, the correct Guest had retired as a detective from the New York Police Department and told a CRU investigator that his trial testimony was accurate.
Newirth filed a motion to vacate Koonce’s conviction on November 19, 2024. The motion said that the police had used a misleading photo array to secure Shuler’s identification. The motion also said that Garcia’s history of misconduct tainted his role in the investigation. The only physical evidence connecting Koonce to the robbery was the blue tote bag that the police said they found in his apartment, but the motion said the police version of how they recovered the bag, a day after purportedly seeing the item at the apartment, didn’t add up.
The bag wasn’t mentioned in the police report of Koonce’s arrest, the motion said, and “it defies credibility that a detective investigating a robbery/shooting would not document the existence of evidence in a suspect’s apartment that matches a description provided by an eyewitness.”
The motion later said, “Detective Garcia’s history of misconduct, including making sworn false statements to courts to implicate innocent police suspects, casts further doubt on the veracity of the claim that a blue tote bag with white handles was ever seen in or taken from Mr. Koonce’s apartment.”
The motion said Garcia and Salottolo “trolled” the Edenwald community when they didn’t have any leads on a case.
In its response, filed November 26, 2024, the CRU consented to vacating the case. It noted Garcia’s extensive misconduct and Shuler’s partial recantation of his trial testimony. It also said that Salottolo “provided misleading, and ostensibly false, testimony” at the suppression hearing.
“The fillers in the photo array were, in fact, suspects, having been implicated in similar robberies, and were not placed in the lineup due to their appearance matching the descriptions of the perpetrators, as Detective Salottolo testified,” the response said.
On December 27, 2024, Justice James McCarthy of Westchester County Supreme Court vacated Koonce’s conviction and dismissed the indictment. In his ruling, Justice McCarthy disagreed with the assertions of the CRU and of Koonce’s attorney that the case was marred by misconduct. But he said that the identification procedures used by the police in 1981 would not pass muster today and that he was concerned that Shuler was the only eyewitness who identified Koonce.
“To be clear, this Court is not suggesting that the single eyewitness in this case did not testify truthfully, nor does it discount the possibility that the eyewitness identification of Defendant was accurate,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, chance is not tantamount to proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
District Attorney Miriam Rocah said in a statement, “From the highly suggestive photo array and identification procedures, to the totality of CRU’s findings on the MVPD detectives’ methods and credibility, we agree with defense counsel that Jeffrey Koonce’s 1983 conviction was obtained in violation of his constitutional rights to due process and therefore can no longer stand by the integrity of this conviction.”
Newirth told WABC-TV, “The idea that you would just collect whatever African American men to put in front of a traumatized witness would only lead to a miscarriage of justice.”
After his release from prison, Koonce became a successful businessman, married, and raised six children, including Malcolm Koonce, a defensive end for the Las Vegas Raiders. Another son, Dejuan Koonce, was a New York State Trooper assigned to the governor’s protective detail.
“I wanted to be a lawyer first,” Dejuan Koonce told WABC. “I wanted to be a lawyer to get my dad out of jail. But then I became a cop because I realized instead of being part of the problem you can be part of the solution. And you can lead by example.”
– Ken Otterbourg
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