Jeffrey Deskovic: Peekskill Case, Exoneration, and Foundation

Jeffrey Deskovic is a New York exoneree who was wrongfully convicted in 1990, at age seventeen, of raping and murdering his high school classmate Angela Correa in Peekskill. Police coerced a confession from him when he was sixteen, during a six-hour interrogation without a lawyer or parent, even though pre-trial DNA testing had already excluded him as the source of semen recovered from the victim. He served nearly sixteen years before the Innocence Project matched the DNA to another man in 2006. Deskovic went on to earn a law degree, pass the New York bar in 2020, and found a nonprofit that reports having helped free fifteen wrongfully convicted people.

The Peekskill Murder and the Interrogation

Fifteen-year-old Angela Correa disappeared in Peekskill, New York on November 15, 1989. Her body was found two days later; she had been raped, beaten, and strangled, and a rape kit recovered semen.¹ Investigators focused on Deskovic, a sixteen-year-old classmate at Peekskill High School.

In late January 1990, police brought him to a small room at a private polygraph business run by a Westchester County Sheriff’s officer. The polygraph examiner, Daniel Stephens of the Putnam County Sheriff’s Department, had been hired specifically to obtain a confession.² Over six hours and three polygraph sessions, with no attorney or parent present and no food, detectives told the teenager he had failed the test and said they had been convinced of his guilt for weeks.

Deskovic began speaking in the third person, then switched to the first, saying he had “lost his temper,” struck the victim with a Gatorade bottle, and held his hand over her mouth too long. By the end of the questioning, he was curled in a fetal position under a table, sobbing.² He was charged on January 25, 1990 with first-degree rape and second-degree murder.¹

Convicted Despite the DNA

Before trial, DNA testing on the semen from the rape kit excluded Deskovic as the source. Prosecutors kept going anyway, arguing to the jury that Correa had consensual sex with someone else and that Deskovic killed her in a jealous rage.¹ The defense moved to suppress the confession on the grounds that it had been coerced from a minor without counsel. Westchester County Supreme Court Judge Nicholas Colabella denied the motion on November 19, 1990, letting the confession in.²

On December 5, 1990, a jury convicted Deskovic of first-degree rape and second-degree murder. He was seventeen. The sentence was fifteen years to life.¹

Sixteen Years in Prison

Deskovic entered the state prison system as a teenager and did not leave until he was thirty-two. He kept writing letters and pleading his case to the parole board. His grandmother died while he was inside. His mother’s visits eventually dropped to once every six months. By his fifteenth year he described himself as spiraling into pessimism, and he later said that on the day of his release he kept expecting to wake up back in a cell.³

The DNA Hit and the Real Killer

The Innocence Project took the case in January 2006. Using newer DNA technology, it retested the semen and ran the profile through the New York State DNA database.² The profile matched Steven Cunningham, who was already in a New York prison for a separate strangulation killing committed several years after Correa’s murder.¹

Deskovic’s conviction was vacated on September 20, 2006, and he walked out of prison. The prosecution formally dismissed the case and apologized on November 2, 2006. In March 2007, Cunningham pleaded guilty to Angela Correa’s murder and was sentenced to twenty years to life.⁴

Compensation

Deskovic recovered through two tracks. New York State paid him $14.05 million on his wrongful imprisonment claim.² He also filed a federal civil rights suit, Deskovic v. City of Peekskill, in the Southern District of New York, naming the City of Peekskill, Putnam County, Westchester County, and individual investigators under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.⁵

Peekskill and its police investigators settled for $5.4 million.⁶ Westchester County settled for $6.5 million in April 2011.⁷ The remaining claims against Daniel Stephens and Putnam County went to trial in October 2014. A federal jury found that Stephens had coerced the confession, fabricated evidence, and conspired to violate Deskovic’s constitutional rights, and awarded $40 million: $25 million for the years in prison and $15 million for the ongoing harm. A pretrial high-low agreement capped Putnam County’s actual payout at $10 million.⁸ Combined with the state award, Deskovic received roughly $36 million.

The Westchester County District Attorney’s own 2007 review of the case, conducted by outside experts, found “tunnel vision” among police and lawyers and concluded that investigators had played down the exculpatory DNA.⁹

Life After Exoneration

Deskovic rebuilt in stages. Mercy College sponsored his tuition and housing for a bachelor’s degree.¹⁰ He earned a master’s at John Jay College of Criminal Justice with a thesis on the causes of wrongful convictions.³ He received a law degree from the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University in 2019 and was admitted to the New York State Bar in October 2020.²

The Deskovic Foundation for Justice

He put part of his compensation into the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, which received 501(c)(3) status in 2009.³ The Foundation reviews trial transcripts, police reports, and physical evidence to find exculpatory leads, alternative suspects, and prosecutorial misconduct, and supports exonerees after release.¹¹ As of 2026, it reports fully exonerating six people, helping free fifteen in total, and carrying thirteen active cases, along with contributions to nine laws aimed at preventing wrongful convictions.¹²

The Andrew Krivak Case

The Foundation’s most prominent recent win is Andrew Krivak, convicted in 1997 of the rape and murder of twelve-year-old Josette Wright in Putnam County and sentenced to twenty-five years to life. His conviction turned on a confession extracted during a long interrogation by the same investigator who had broken Deskovic: Daniel Stephens.¹³ Evidence pointed to another man, Howard Gombert, who later confessed. Deskovic personally put up his home as collateral for Krivak’s bail.¹⁴ On February 27, 2023, a jury acquitted Krivak after less than a day of deliberation, twenty-four years after his conviction.

Reform Advocacy and Public Profile

Deskovic has pushed for mandatory full-length recording of police interrogations, arguing that New York’s existing law contains too many exceptions and that any unrecorded statement should be inadmissible. He has also called for an independent commission with subpoena power over prosecutorial misconduct, uniform standards for preserving biological evidence, automatic discovery at arraignment, and double-blind eyewitness lineups.¹⁵

His story is the subject of Sixteen Years, a feature documentary directed by Jia Rizvi that won Best Feature Film and Best Trailer at the 2026 New Jersey Film Awards and has screened at John Jay College, the Ossining Public Library, and Leiden University in the Netherlands.¹⁶¹⁷

1
National Registry of Exonerations. Jeffrey Deskovic
2
Innocence Project. Jeffrey Deskovic
3
Witness to Mass Incarceration. Jeffrey Deskovic
4
Innocence Project. Man Pleads Guilty to Murder for Which Deskovic Was Wrongly Convicted
5
VLex. Deskovic v. City of Peekskill, 673 F.Supp.2d 154
6
The Journal News. Jeffrey Deskovic Wrongful Conviction Forty Million Verdict
7
The New York Times. Westchester County Settles Wrongful Conviction Lawsuit
8
Prison Legal News. Exonerated New York Prisoner Recovers $21.9 Million in Damages
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Innocence Project. District Attorney’s Report on New York Wrongful Conviction Fuels Statewide Reform Efforts
10
Davis Vanguard. Looking Back: The Jeffrey Deskovic Story
11
Deskovic Foundation. About the Deskovic Foundation
12
Deskovic Foundation. Deskovic Foundation for Justice
13
National Registry of Exonerations. Andrew Krivak
14
Deskovic Foundation. The Case of Andrew Krivak and Anthony DiPippo
15
The Journal News. Exoneree Deskovic: Here’s How Cuomo Can Reform NYS Criminal Justice System
16
River Journal Online. Jeffrey Deskovic: A Journey From Jail to Justice
17
Leiden University. 16 Years: From Wrongful Conviction to Justice