‘Robbed’ of His Life by a Wrongful Conviction, Man is Now Free, and Bewildered

NEW YORK — Larry McKee’s eyes lost their glimmer the second he stepped out of a car on a recent morning and recognized the Bronx corner where a street fight derailed his life more than 20 years ago.

McKee had returned to the corner in Morris Heights to make peace with his past, he said somberly, but most importantly to embrace his future. A laundromat had been replaced by a delicatessen, but other than that, the corner retained the same bustling feel.

“This is where I was taken from,” he said, almost in a whisper. “It’s a hurt feeling, but I’ve got to move on.”

McKee spent two decades in prison for a murder he has long maintained he did not commit. Eight months ago, a state judge threw out his conviction on the recommendation of the Bronx district attorney’s office, which determined important evidence had never been given to the defense.

Ever since his release from the Adirondack Correctional Facility in Ray Brook, New York, McKee, now 47, has learned to live in a very different world than the one he left in 1997. It is a difficult adjustment that parallels the experiences of many others who have been released in recent years after serving time for wrongful convictions.

“Technology’s changed,” he said, holding his iPhone 8 curiously. “The phone. I’ve still got problems with it, with emails and texts.”

A jury found McKee guilty of murder after a 16-year-old witness testified that he saw McKee shoot Theodore Vance, 29, after a fight on the corner, at 176th Street and University Avenue. The fight turned into an all-out brawl in which brickbats and other debris became weapons.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers agree Vance struck McKee with a pipelike object during the melee, and then was shot by someone. McKee insists he ran away before the shot was fired. The gun was never recovered.

McKee was released after a new witness came forward last year and gave a different description of the killer. The Bronx district attorney’s office, after a six-month investigation, also determined important grand jury testimony was never shared with the defense. A person who knew the victim told the grand jury that in his last moments, the man had described his killer as a “Spanish guy.” McKee is black.

In January, the Bronx district attorney, Darcel Clark, asked Justice Robert Torres to throw out the conviction, which he did. Clark’s office also dismissed the indictment.

McKee’s lawyers argue the grand jury testimony alone would have been enough to clear him of the murder charge in the 1990s.

“He would have never gotten convicted if the jury heard the victim’s last words,” said one of the defense lawyers, Oscar Michelen. “Here the prosecutor intentionally withheld evidence that could have proven that Larry was innocent. There is no excuse.”

Clark has acknowledged in a statement that her office had “uncovered potentially exculpatory evidence that was not provided to the defense at the time of trial.”

McKee said he never lost hope that he would get a new trial. After every legal setback, he studied court transcripts and wrote letters proclaiming his innocence to anyone who would read them.

The real break in the case came late last year, when a friend of McKee ran into a man on a busy Bronx street who said he had seen McKee’s encounter with Vance. The witness, who was blind in one eye, said the killer had been a light-skinned Hispanic man.

McKee’s lawyer, Michael Talassazan, tracked down the witness and interviewed him.

Risa Gerson, a senior investigative council with the Bronx district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, said investigators had already decided to reopen McKee’s case after receiving one of his letters detailing the theory of a Hispanic assailant. Then Talassazan told her about the new witness.

“He provided us with the taped interview,” Gerson said. “He also made the witness available to us.”

Gerson scoured the case files and found references to a witness who was “blind in one eye.” But the witness had never testified. She also pored over the grand jury records and discovered the testimony about Vance’s last words.

“When I came across the grand jury testimony, I said, ‘Oh My God,’ ” she recalled.

The witness told Talassazan and Gerson that he had intended to tell detectives that a “Spanish guy” fired a handgun after McKee had fled the scene.

He changed his mind when two men cornered him in his mother’s building, burned him with a cigarette and told him that “his cooperation was coming to an end.” He said he left the city and hid in New England.

Gina Mignola, deputy general counsel and chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit, said investigators believed the witness despite the time lapse.

The witness did not respond to requests for an interview through Talassazan.

Gerson found other witnesses interviewed by the police that cast doubt on the trial testimony of the 16-year-old witness. But she also said the evidence showed McKee had the motive and opportunity to commit the crime.

In the end, Gerson concluded that McKee was deprived of a fair trial, not that he was innocent, she said. McKee’s case remains a rarity in the Bronx. Unit investigators have received 153 review applications and have taken up 17. They have asked the convictions be vacated in only three cases, including McKee’s.

McKee said his lawyers are preparing a lawsuit against the city. For his part, however, he said he tries not to dwell on what he lost. An opportunity to marry and have children? A long career in construction? A closer relationship with estranged family members?

“They robbed me of a career, a life,” he said quietly. “What I wanted to do is over. You can’t fix that.” He said he wants to forge a new path in a neighborhood only a mile away from where he spent his early years, a period when crime was high.

“Everything is better now,” he said. “It was the wild, Wild West back then.”

He pointed to a high-rise on 176th Street near the corner where he was arrested.

“I used to live right there, on the third floor in this building,” he said. “I used to play in all these buildings when I was a kid. But that’s all in the past. I don’t want to go there anymore.”

Life after prison has been lonely for McKee, and that is by choice, he said.

“The one thing you don’t have in prison is privacy,” McKee said. “I like to be alone a lot these days.” A small circle of loved ones helped him to find a one-bedroom apartment near Yankee Stadium and to stay afloat financially until he can secure work. He has thought about getting a job in construction. For now, he is content with reconnecting with his two siblings and extended family members, and visiting the park with three nieces — ages 22, 10 and 3.

A partner and children of his own are not a priority, McKee said, staring at his shoes. “If it happens, it happens.”

He relishes simple activities, like walking to his corner deli to buy a cup of coffee. He continues to learn what each icon is for on his iPhone. And he scratches his head when he sees people taking selfies on the street.

“I spend my days minding my own business,” he said. “I wake up. Go for a walk. I can do a lot of things I couldn’t do before. I couldn’t go and just look at Yankee Stadium. So I appreciate little things like that. My old life is over.”