Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Malcolm Koonce was born in 1998. He was drafted by the team in 2021 and enjoyed a breakout 2023.
Years before any of that, however, the Koonce family endured a harrowing experience.
In 1983, Malcolm’s father Jeffrey Koonce was convicted of committing an armed robbery in Mount Vernon, New York in 1981. Now, the elder Koonce, now 63 years old, is looking to change that.
According to ABC News, Jeffrey Koonce will ask a suburban New York judge to vacate his conviction, citing lies by detectives working the case and suggestive photo identification techniques.
Backing Koonce up is Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah, whose unit found a number of unjust practices by parties involved in the case.
These practices included, but were not limited to, police pressuring the lone victim-witness to implicate Koonce, making his picture larger in a photo array, and failing to interview alibi witnesses who claimed he was elsewhere at the time of the robbery.
Mount Vernon police accused Jeffrey and younger brother Paul Koonce of being two of three men involved in robbing the Vernon Stars Rod and Gun Club, forcing patrons to lie down and give them approximately $500 in cash, jewelry, and other valuables.
According to police, one of the men fired two rounds from a sawed-off shotgun, striking a 15-year-old and two other patrons.
Rocah’s office contends that detectives on the case used unlawful tactics to pressure the lone witness to identify Koonce, with others saying that it was too dark in the club to identify the perpetrators.
The witness later informed Rocah that, despite picking Koonce out of a photo array that featured his enlarged photograph, he did not remember seeing any faces, and his view was further blocked by patrons protecting him after he was shot.
Koonce was sentenced to serve seven and a half to 15 years in prison for the robbery and a shorter sentence for bail jumping. He was released from prison on parole in August 1992.
Hopefully, Koonce’s story of suffering under official corruption inspires some sort of change.
