New York Courts and Law Enforcement

A New York judge on Monday vacated the 2007 robbery conviction of Kenneth Windley and dismissed the case, freeing the 61-year-old after nearly 20 years in prison for a roughly $550 robbery that Brooklyn prosecutors now say he did not commit. Windley was arrested in 2005 after buying a stove for his mother with a $542.77 money order that turned out to have been stolen from 70-year-old Gerald Ross, who later picked Windley out of a lineup, and prior felony convictions helped drive a 20‑years‑to‑life sentence. The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit found new evidence, including sworn confessions from two other men who admitted robbing Ross and are already serving time for similar robberies of older men followed home from banks and check‑cashing offices in 2005–06. DA Eric Gonzalez called the case a 'cautionary tale' about how evidence can be misread, apologized to Windley and said that had jurors known about the alternate suspects and their robbery patterns, it likely would have created reasonable doubt. No new charges will be filed in the Ross case because the statute of limitations has expired and Ross has died, leaving the two admitted robbers uncharged for this specific crime and adding fuel to ongoing debates over wrongful convictions, eyewitness reliability, and remedies for people who lose decades to errors in the justice system.