Vindicated by DNA, but a Lost Man on the Outside

Jeffrey Deskovic, left, on a subway to Greenwich Village. He was freed last year after 16 years in prison.

Nov. 25, 2007

Free and Uneasy


By FERNANDA SANTOS, New York Times

As a boy, Jeffrey Mark Deskovic could swim the length of a pool underwater
without coming up for air. On sultry days at the Elmira state prison, where
he spent most of his 16 years behind bars for a rape and murder he did not
commit, Mr. Deskovic would close his eyes under a row of outdoor showers and
imagine himself swimming.

For months after his release in September 2006, he had been yearning for a
chance to dive in, to test his endurance, to feel that familiar sensation of
pushing his body through the water, to get to the other side.

On a late-winter afternoon before giving a speech on wrongful convictions,
Mr. Deskovic giggled mischievously as he stood at the edge of a hotel pool
in Latham, N.Y., an Albany suburb, then leapt in abruptly, hugging his knees
to produce a huge splash. In shorts and T-shirt, he sucked in some air and
dived under, holding his breath. And holding it. He made his way across the
pool in hurried, sideways strokes, and emerged gasping but smiling.

"Yes! Yes! I did it," Mr. Deskovic yelled, his fists clenched above his head
like a victorious boxer. "I still have it in me."

A grown man with a full bushy beard, celebrating the simple accomplishment
of an innocent youth. A tiny yet transcendent moment, one among many such
moments of recaptured pleasures and newfound problems since his exoneration
and release from prison last autumn.

Having walked out of the Westchester County Courthouse vindicated yet
petrified of the unpredictable tomorrows ahead, Mr. Deskovic found that his
first year on the outside was more turbulent than triumphant. Still trying
to recover what was stolen from him, he is, at 34, a free man who has yet to
feel truly free.

At least 205 men and one woman nationwide have been exonerated through DNA
evidence since 1989, including 53 who, like Mr. Deskovic, were convicted of
murder. In gathering information on 137 of them over the past four months -
one of the most extensive such efforts to date - The New York Times found
that many faced the same challenges Mr. Deskovic has confronted, like making
a living, reconnecting with relatives and seeking financial recompense for
his lost years.

But given Mr. Deskovic's age at conviction (he was 17, one of about two
dozen of the 206 exonerated inmates imprisoned as teenagers) and length of
incarceration (about 35 percent spent more than 15 years behind bars), he
has faced particular challenges.

He could be the assertive adult who articulately lobbied at the State
Capitol in April to require videotaping of police interrogations. He could
also be the overgrown adolescent who stamped his feet and pouted at a Grand
Central Terminal kiosk in August when asked if he wanted his smoothie with
yogurt or apple juice.

Having spent nearly half his life locked up, accused of brutalizing a high
school classmate he hardly knew, Mr. Deskovic was sent into the world last
fall lacking some of life's most fundamental skills and experiences.

He had never lived alone, owned a car, scanned the classifieds in search of
work. He had never voted, balanced a checkbook or learned to knot a tie.

He missed the senior prom, the funeral of the grandmother who helped raise
him, and his best friend's wedding.

He said he had never made love.

For six months, Mr. Deskovic got by on $137 a month in disability checks and
$150 in food stamps from the federal government, carrying cans of tuna in
his backpack. Now earning money through speeches and newspaper columns about
wrongful conviction, Mr. Deskovic paid rent for the first time in his life
in August, for a cozy attic apartment in Tarrytown that the county
subsidizes because of his depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In September, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the police,
the medical examiner, a prison guard and the governments of two counties,
alleging that detectives falsified reports and coerced his confession, and
that the prison guard groped and beat him. A separate lawsuit in the Court
of Claims is planned seeking payment from the state for the wrongful
incarceration.

Since January, he has been enrolled at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, and he
expects to earn a bachelor's degree in behavioral sciences in two months.
Since June, he has studied daily for the Law School Admissions Test in hopes
of soon going to law school.

At Mercy on a $22,000 scholarship, Mr. Deskovic has read Marx, Freud and
Jung but has struggled to navigate the nuances of flirtation and friendship.

"These people are half my age," he said one morning in a campus cafeteria
filled with loud young men in baseball caps and baggy jeans. "They have
their own social networks and I'm not part of it. They have direction.
They're going through the normal cycle of things."

Mr. Deskovic's life after exoneration has been punctuated by milestones like
getting a driver's license (and a $3,000 Pontiac Grand Am with a bumper
sticker proclaiming, "Failure is not an option"), and new adventures, like
playing table tennis at a Greenwich Village bar with people he had met
online.

There have been confounding trips to the supermarket and painful reunions
with his mother, hard-won victories over his fear of speaking in public and
profound disillusionment over his own inability to accept his past.

And there was a bittersweet return to the courthouse in White Plains in May
for the sentencing of the man found by DNA evidence to have committed the
crime. There, the victim's mother offered Mr. Deskovic an apology: "How I
would like to turn back time and return to you what was cruelly taken away."

Of course, she can't. No one can.

"Sometimes," Mr. Deskovic said one morning in his dorm room, "I feel that
the only difference from here to prison is that I don't have bars on my
windows." He was kneeling on his bed and staring at the neat lawn outside.
"I'm free, but I'm trapped, and no matter how much I run, I'll never make up
for the lost time."

Scarred Life, Severed Family

Carrying a box of religious and self-help books, a garbage bag full of legal
documents and a few worn-out sweaters, Mr. Deskovic went from prison to
Cobleskill, a speck of a town in central New York where his mother, Linda
McGarr, settled after his conviction. He calls Cobleskill "the boondocks,"
adding an expletive whenever he is angry at his mother, which is often.

While he was locked up, Ms. McGarr was Mr. Deskovic's connection to the
outside world (he has never known his father). He wrote letters and sent
them to her to type. She, in turn, sent money for cans of oysters at the
prison commissary. When he needed to badger a lawyer, she was his voice. But
the relationship withered through the bars. Ms. McGarr, 60, said she tired
of the lonely 150-mile drives to visit him. Mr. Deskovic said he resented
her lack of urgency in tackling his legal appeals.

Two days after his release, Mr. Deskovic exploded: "How come you didn't do
more to help me?"

"I know you went through hell in there," Ms. McGarr responded, "but I paid
dearly, too."

The next morning, Mr. Deskovic stuffed his possessions in plastic bags and
boarded a train to Peekskill, the scene of the crime that scarred his life.

On Nov. 15, 1989, Angela Correa - a sophomore at Peekskill High, like Mr.
Deskovic - slipped a "New Kids on the Block" tape into a portable cassette
player and took her camera to a park near her home, snapping a picture of a
dove perched on the roof as she left. Two days later, someone spotted her
naked body in the woods.

The police retrieved hair and semen samples, which did not match Mr.
Deskovic's DNA; prosecutors argued that they were from earlier consensual
sex. Mr. Deskovic, however, fit the description provided by a criminal
profiler for the police, and raised investigators' suspicions when he cried
copiously at Ms. Correa's funeral, though they were not close friends. (In a
recent interview, Mr. Deskovic explained that he was always picked on in
school and Angela was one of few students who were nice to him, once helping
him with algebra.)

After repeated questioning over two months, Mr. Deskovic confessed during a
seven-hour interrogation and polygraph test, telling the police he had hit
Ms. Correa with a Gatorade bottle and grabbed her around the throat. In the
lawsuit, Mr. Deskovic contends that detectives fed him these details, and
promised that if he confessed he would not go to prison but would receive
psychiatric treatment.

"I was tired, confused, scared, hungry - I wanted to get out of there," he
recalled recently. "I told the police what they wanted to hear, but I never
got to go home. They lied to me."

More than a quarter of all prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence had falsely
confessed or made incriminating statements, according to the Innocence
Project, the legal clinic that secured Mr. Deskovic's release. Like many of
those men, he had maintained his innocence since shortly after the
confession, proclaiming at his sentencing hearing: "I didn't do anything."

"Maybe you're innocent," the judge conceded before sentencing him to 15
years to life. "But the jury has spoken."

Back in Peekskill after his release, frosty raindrops pelting his skin, Mr.
Deskovic ambled past the police station on Nelson Avenue where he was held
after his arrest and up Brown Street toward Crossroads, the apartment
complex where he grew up.

"I used to play kickball here, and when it snowed, I'd get a piece of
cardboard and sled down this hill over there," he said, staring at a slope
between a tall brick building and a playground. "I used to have a life."

"Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that there are people on other
planets and that all of a sudden you're dropped there, with no idea how
these people live their lives, how their society works," he blurted. "I'm
this alien. I'm the man pretending he knows what the hell is going on around
him when, in fact, he's clueless."

Growing up, Mr. Deskovic and his younger half-brother, Christopher McGarr,
spent hours shooting hoops at Depew Park, swimming in a local pool or
watching wrestling on television, then mimicking the moves of Hulk Hogan and
Mr. T on the living-room carpet.

"I didn't have no father growing up, so I looked up to my brother,"
explained Mr. McGarr, now 30. "But when he went to prison, a part of me
died."

On the school bus, other children called his brother a rapist, a killer. So
he stopped taking the bus. Eventually, he stopped going to school. Soon he
followed Mr. Deskovic into the criminal justice system, racking up more than
20 arrests and several stays in jail for drugs, theft, assault and
trespassing.

By the time of Mr. Deskovic's release, the brothers had not seen each other
for 12 years. They waited another six months, until Mr. Deskovic was
speaking at Siena College, near Albany, where Mr. McGarr lives.

"I don't see him," Mr. Deskovic said as he entered the lecture hall.

"He's right there," his mother replied, pointing to a man on a couch.

Mr. Deskovic hesitated, pursing his lips to stop them quivering, then
trudged over to his brother, who spread his arms. They hugged a long time -
Mr. Deskovic in a suit and striped tie, Mr. McGarr in loose clothes and gold
chains - as their mother snapped pictures and an uncle rolled video.

"It's been so long," Mr. McGarr said, rubbing his fists against Mr.
Deskovic's back.

But the brothers saw each other only once more, for a tense evening of
bowling and pizza in April. Mr. Deskovic's meetings with his mother have
devolved into sporadic phone calls that invariably end in screams and tears.

"Too much time has passed; we have no connection," Mr. Deskovic said. "My
relatives don't know who I am."

Seeking Friends

In his canvas book bag, Mr. Deskovic carries a copy of a newspaper article
about his exoneration, in case anyone questions why a convicted killer is
walking the streets. The newspaper picture of him and his lawyers also
adorns Mr. Deskovic's new Web site (jeffreydeskovicspe aks.org) and MySpace
page, which until recently included a plea: "Is anyone up to showing a man
who has been away for 16 years how to have a good time?"

In his loneliest moments, when he scans the few personal contacts on his
cellphone and realizes he has no one with whom to share his angst, Mr.
Deskovic misses the predictability of prison life, where decisions were made
for him.

At Elmira, guards woke Mr. Deskovic at 5:30 a.m. and escorted him to the
kitchen, where he helped prepare breakfast for 1,800 inmates. He stood
outside his cell for each of four daily counts; after the last, at 10:30
p.m., what the guards call the "quiet bell" signaled bedtime.

"If I was looking for entertainment, I'd stand by the chess players in the
yard until someone challenged me" for a match, Mr. Deskovic recalled. For
kinship and protection, Mr. Deskovic - a former altar boy who converted to
Islam during his first year in prison - sought out fellow Muslim inmates.
"If it weren't for my religion," he said, "I would have taken my own life in
prison, or I would have lost my mind."

On the outside, life's pace is his to establish. During the week, there are
classes, college work, psychotherapy sessions, meetings with a social worker
and with the lawyers handling his compensation suit, plus practicing table
tennis. Most weekends, he sits alone in his apartment, scouring the Internet
for phone numbers of colleges, churches and other institutions that might be
interested in hiring him for a speech.

He also trawls the Web for companionship, joining a hodgepodge of groups:
"Westchester/ So CT Social and Active Group," "Straight Edge NYC" and a table
tennis club.

One June evening, Mr. Deskovic took the train to the Fat Cat, a cavernous
basement bar in Greenwich Village, to meet the table tennis players. As a
duo played Sinatra on piano and trumpet, Mr. Deskovic ordered a ginger beer
and stood across the table from a 37-year-old stockbroker who runs the
group.

Score: 13-10.

"I got the momentum, baby," Mr. Deskovic said, bobbing side to side.

14-10. 15-10.

"I got the serve now!"

18-12.

"I'm going to win! I'm going to win!"

Speaking With Motivation

On a brisk March morning, Mr. Deskovic arrived at the Mercy College
cafeteria ahead of the breakfast rush, wearing a suit and carrying three
ties on a hanger. He approached a woman wiping counters and whispered in her
ear. She grabbed the silver tie with white diamonds and knotted it around
his neck.

"I'm an adult and I don't know how to fix my ties," Mr. Deskovic said.

He wolfed down a plate of pancakes, then called Darren Wilkins, a concert
promoter he met in December and hired to manage his career as a speaker.

Weeks before, Mr. Wilkins took Mr. Deskovic shopping in Harlem, where he
bought three four-button suits. For inspiration, they have listened to the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. For technique,
they have watched videos by the motivational speaker Tony Robbins.

Together, they drafted a lecture describing the mistakes that led to Mr.
Deskovic's wrongful conviction and outlining changes to prevent others from
meeting the same fate.

That March day, before speaking to the League of Women Voters at an elegant
home in Bronxville, he and Mr. Wilkins, a Christian, held hands, bowed their
heads and prayed.

"Public speaking is a way for me to find some meaning to what happened to
me," explained Mr. Deskovic, who has not applied for traditional jobs since
his release, but has traveled across New York and four other states for
speeches, including one in Texas in September.

In Bronxville, Mr. Deskovic rested his hands on a plant stand in lieu of a
lectern. His voice was flat and soft. He seemed to deliberately lock eyes
with each of the 16 women sipping coffee.

"If anything I've said here today has moved you in any way, I'd like you to
join me in a movement against wrongful convictions and to get the death
penalty out of New York State," he said. "Can you make a phone call? Can you
join a demonstration? "

Between speeches, Mr. Deskovic counts on donations of food, clothes and cash
from people who have heard his story in the news, as well as members of
local mosques and the Westchester charity New Beginnings.

He rarely eats out, but for the occasional $4 kebab. Mostly, he survives on
Cheerios, tuna, canned corn and shrimp-flavored noodle soup.

On July 27, Mr. Deskovic got the keys to a one-bedroom attic apartment, in a
yellow house with green shutters in Tarrytown. The living room window
overlooks the Hudson River, a view much like the one he had during a short
stint at nearby Sing Sing.

He trimmed his beard that day, shedding perhaps the last visible reminder of
the man prison had made him.

A month later, a dean at Mercy College, Shelley Alkin, who had helped
arrange Mr. Deskovic's scholarship after his release from prison, took him
shopping at Pathmark to teach him about cleaning products, what types of
food he ought to be eating and how much he should expect to pay.

"And I have a plan for when I go shopping on my own," Mr. Deskovic said
proudly. "I'm saving up the empty containers so I can bring them with me and
buy the same things all over again."