Jeffrey Deskovic
After sixteen years behind bars, often the greatest casualty is hope. After sixteen years of believing in your own innocence when no one else believes you, the expectation is despair. However, Jeffrey Deskovic never succumbed to this prediction. He never stopped fighting for himself, and now, he will never stop fighting for others.
In 1990, Jeffrey Deskovic was wrongly convicted of a violent crime at the age of seventeen, and he was not exonerated until 2006. He spent sixteen years in prison, knowing he was innocent. Now, he works to ensure that no one else has to suffer this same fate.
Deskovic is an attorney, and the founder of the Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice, a nonprofit organization that frees wrongfully convicted people. So far, the foundation has freed ten people so far, and they have helped to pass three laws aimed at preventing a wrongful conviction.
Located in the Bronx in New York, Deskovic also sits on the Global Advisory Council for Restorative Justice International and is a board member of the National Justice Impact Bar Association. Deskovic was inspired to become involved in this advocacy work after being in prison himself.
According to Deskovic, his wrongful conviction was caused by forced confession, prosecutorial misconduct, fraud by the medical examiner, and a terrible public defender. He was given a sentence of fifteen years to life in prison, however, he was later exonerated due to further DNA testing which not only confirmed that he was not the perpetrator but also revealed the true culprit.
Until then, however, Deskovic spent over a decade in prison, continually fighting for himself, writing letters to anyone he could in order to convince them of his innocence, and attempting to convince the parole board by pleading his innocence as well. By the fifteenth year, Deskovic began to spiral into pessimism, losing hope that he would ever clear his name, that is, until the Innocence Project agreed to represent him.
Getting their representation turned Deskovic’s situation around. With their help, the new DNA evidence was able to be resubmitted to court. When Deskovic’s lawyer arrived to inform Deskovic of his liberation, he did not believe it. For hours, Deskovic would not let himself dare to hope that this was really true.
Deskovic would not entertain the thought of leaving until his lawyer asked him for his proper clothes and shoe size in order to buy him a suit. It was having the luxury of choosing his own clothes made him truly feel like a free man.
As Deskovic describes his feelings on that first day out of prison, “I thought I finally managed to lose my mind. I'm going to wake back up, and I'm going to see the cell walls and the bars and the bed and you know, the whole bit.”
After being released from prison at age 32, Deskovic, who was 30 credits short of a Bachelor’s degree at the time, finished out his undergraduate education with a scholarship through Mercy College. He then pursued a Master’s degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, writing his thesis on the causes and reforms for wrongful conviction.
Although he was able to rejoin the path of higher education, reentry was anything but easy. Deskovic often felt out of place in social situations and unable to communicate with people. He also lacked the knowledge of how to use most technology, given the fact that most of it did not exist before his incarceration.
“It often felt like I was in a parallel world, like an alternate universe where I didn't fit in,” Deskovic said.
Deskovic also lost most of his friends during his time in prison, and lost touch with most of his extended family. Deskovic’s grandmother would visit, however she passed away while he was still incarcerated. As the years went on, even Deskovic’s mother started visiting only once every six months. Like many formerly incarcerated individuals, Deskovic reentered the world basically alone, and he had to navigate it by himself.
Therefore, he threw himself into work. For about five years, Deskovic was an individual advocate for criminal justice reform, doing speaking engagements on television, radio, in newspapers, and even writing as a weekly columnist for the Westchester Guardian. He would assist wrongfully convicted individuals and support them during their trials as an activist. He traded his privacy in exchange for raising awareness on the issues at hand in order to encourage a push in policy changes, meeting with elected officials along with all his other engagements. However, Deskovic still wanted to do more.
“I wanted to take the advocacy world to the next level and be involved in helping to free people,” Deskovic said. “At some point, being in the front row of the courtroom wasn't enough. I wanted to go to sit at the defense table. I wanted to represent some of the clients, ask some of the questions. Hence, going into law school [and] becoming an attorney.”
After officially becoming a lawyer, Deskovic founded his Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice. In 2009, the foundation gained non-profit status from the IRS, and by 2011, they were working out of a true office, conducting a full-fledged business.
To run this business the right way, it is necessary to have lawyers, investigators, paralegals, a public relations director, fundraisers, an executive director, and managers for interns and volunteers. Even with all these people, a case can take from eight to twelve months up to three to four years. This makes what Deskovic does incredibly expensive, spending around $1.3 million a year. For Deskovic, this is all worth it, in order to protect people from the fate that he suffered for sixteen years.
Deskovic’s clients often approach him by writing to him for help. “I'm kind of a legend in the New York prison system, so anybody who's anybody in the prison system that goes to the law library knows exactly who I am,” Deskovic said. “It's a tremendous responsibility.”
To decide on which clients to take, Deskovic and his team ask three main questions: Does the applicant have at least a plausible claim of actual innocence based on something objective? Is there a potential way to win? How much time and financial resources is it going to take?
Once these questions are answered, Deskovic uses his four main knowledge bases in order to provide the best defense for his clients. He draws on his practical law school knowledge, his criminal justice knowledge from graduate school, what he has learned so far as a practicing lawyer, and of course, his own experience with the legal and prison systems.
“I have a well-roundedness that informs how I analyze and look at issues policy-wise,” Deskovic said. “I'm able to look at it from those four lenses, whereas most people are only looking at it from one.”
With these strengths, Deskovic has committed himself to fighting for change and ensuring that innocent people are no longer abused by the legal and prison systems. Of the 2.3 million people that are incarcerated, he believes that up to 15-20% are innocent, and he will not stop working to change this injustice.
That is why he feels that working with Witness to Mass Incarceration and being a member of The Map is so important. He believes that formerly incarcerated people are so often reduced to the worst thing they ever did in their lives, and by highlighting the way they are participating in the economy and engaging in entrepreneurship, The Map can reframe the narrative surrounding formerly incarcerated individuals.
Deskovic is also looking forward to the Witness July 18th Suitcase Sunday event. He is excited to see specific businesses being highlighted and donations to these businesses being collected.
“I work 40-50 hours a week just for free just because it's a passion project, but a majority of people need to make a living, and so that money has to come from someplace,” Deskovic said. “Hence the need for donors and for grants from the government and...wealthy people.”
For Deskovic, his work is like a therapy, continually restoring the hope that he so nearly lost after sixteen years in prison.
“I'm carrying out my mission in the world. I believe that I'm here to fight wrongful conviction,” Deskovic said. “I get to make an impact now, and it's very satisfying. It's healing. It's cathartic, it's meaningful. And it's great to make a difference.
Abby Stern