Father of Raiders star Malcolm Koonce had his 1983 conviction dismissed after the DA said it was tainted.

NEW YORK (AP) — Years before Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Malcolm Koonce was born, his father spent time in prison for an armed robbery conviction that prosecutors now say was tainted by questionable tactics by to the police and a witness identification that was later retracted.

A suburban New York judge agreed Friday, expunging the conviction of Jeffrey Koonce, 67, and dismissing his charge more than four decades after a 1981 robbery at the Vernon Stars Rod and Gun Mount Vernon Club.

Koonce, who has spent nearly eight years in prison, has always maintained his innocence and insisted he was nowhere near the club, where three people were hit by shotgun pellets while patrons were robbed of money and jewelry .

Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah backed his request to expunge the conviction after her office found problems with the case.

“I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders,” Koonce said as a judge cleared his name.

The Rocah Conviction Review Unit investigated the 1983 conviction and found evidence that Mount Vernon police pressured the only victim-witness to implicate Koonce, made Koonce’s profile higher than that of others in a photo array and did not interview alibi witnesses who corroborated his claim that he was elsewhere.

A Mount Vernon detective later lied about the makeup of the photo arrays when he testified at pretrial hearings and at Koonce’s trial, and a court later ordered the department to change its warrantless photo identification practices, he said Rocah. One of the detectives involved in Koonce’s case later went to prison on a federal corruption charge.

Rocah’s office also found that detectives hurt Koonce by failing to cross-examine all of his alibi witnesses. They include a now-retired New York City police detective who said Koonce was with him in the city the night of the robbery.

In a statement, Rocah said Koonce’s conviction “was marred by such questionable investigative processes and procedures” that her office could no longer stand.

“Today marks the end of 41 years of injustice as Mr. Koonce is finally vindicated in court. Prosecutor Mimi Rocah and her team should be commended for their commitment to bringing justice to Mr. Koonce,” said Koonce’s attorney, Karen Newirth.

At a hearing Friday, Westchester County Judge James McCarty ordered Koonce’s robbery and gun possession convictions vacated and his indictment dismissed, citing deficiencies in the witness identification and “the totality of the unique circumstances presented by this case.”

But McCarty refused to accept the allegations of police misconduct, saying in a written opinion released with his decision that they “are solely the product of conjecture and conjecture.” The judge also said the police department’s failure to interview some alibi witnesses was of little consequence because Koonce had the opportunity to call his own alibi witnesses at his trial.

Koonce escaped from the courthouse during jury deliberations and was found about seven months later sleeping on his girlfriend’s couch in the Bronx, according to newspaper reports at the time.

He was sentenced to 7½ to 15 years in prison for the robbery and served a shorter, concurrent sentence on bail suspension. He was paroled in August 1992. His brother Paul, a high school student at the time, was also charged with robbery. He was acquitted.

Malcolm Koonce was born in 1998. The Raiders of the NFL drafted him in 2021. Another son, Dejuan Koonce, is a retired New York State Trooper who was assigned to the protective detail for Governor Kathy Hochul and former Governor Andrew Cuomo .

“I have wonderful children, and they’ve had to suffer whatever society thought of me, which wasn’t true at all, for their entire lives,” Koonce said at Friday’s hearing. “This right here is a vindication of everything, to them.”

Police accused Jeffrey and Paul Koonce of being among three men who held up the Vernon Stars Club on June 20, 1981. Patrons were forced to lie face down on the floor and hand over about $500 in cash, jewelry and other valuables, police said. .

One of the perpetrators had a sawed-off shotgun and fired at least two rounds, hitting a 15-year-old boy and two other patrons, police said.

Rocah’s office found that detectives used shady tactics to get a victim to identify Koonce as the shooter. He was the only one who did that. Others told investigators it was too dark in the club to identify the perpetrators by their faces.

The witness, a high school freshman at the time, picked Koonce out of a photo array that featured Koonce’s enlarged photo and smaller images of men who did not look like him.

The witness later told Rocah’s office that he did not recall seeing any faces in the darkened club and that other patrons covered him immediately after the shooting, obscuring his view.

Detectives then brought Koonce to the hospital where the witness was treated so they could personally identify him. The witness said at the preliminary hearing that he felt pressured to quickly identify Koonce. The trial judge called the tactic “impermissibly suggestive.”

In his written opinion, McCarty said he “does not suggest that the only eyewitness in this case did not actually testify,” nor does he “discount the possibility that the eyewitness’s identification of (Koonce) was correct.”

“However, chance does not amount to proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” the judge wrote.

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Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this report.