Nassau paid $10 million settlement to Joseph Jackson, whose murder conviction was overturned after 23 years in prison

Nassau County paid $10 million earlier this year to a man who spent more than two decades in prison before his murder conviction was thrown out, according to documents obtained by Newsday.

Joseph Jackson was sentenced to 25 years to life after being convicted of the 1994 fatal shooting of a teenager in Freeport. But his 1997 conviction on second-degree murder and other charges was overturned in 2018, after it emerged that police had never released critical eyewitness statements.

Months after he was freed, Jackson filed a federal civil lawsuit alleging that Nassau County and Freeport Village police "hid and withheld the existence of eyewitnesses," leading to an improper trial and wrongful conviction. Freeport was later removed from the case.

In March, the Nassau County Legislature approved a settlement in the case, county legislative records show. The $10 million sum, according to records obtained this week by Newsday via a public records request, appears to be the largest paid by the county for police misconduct in at least the past five years. 

It comes as Long Island governments are paying an increasing amount in settlements in response to lawsuits alleging misconduct, Newsday has reported. Nassau County faces at least two other pending lawsuits from men freed from prison after their convictions were overturned.

Gabriel Harvis, Jackson's New York City-based attorney, declined to comment or make Jackson available for an interview.

Spokespeople for Nassau County and county legislators did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment. A spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department declined to comment.

'Coerced' into 'false confession'

In his lawsuit, Jackson, now 56, alleged that his "wrongful conviction was not an isolated incident," stating that Nassau and Freeport police by 1997 "were well aware that arrests and prosecutions tainted by police falsifications were a major problem."

In March 1994, 19-year-old Steven Jason was killed in a late-night shooting after leaving a party at an American Legion Hall in Freeport. Police collected several eyewitness statements at the time, according to Jackson's lawsuit.

Nassau police arrested Jackson months later, after he had sold cocaine to an informant, Newsday reported. Police interrogated him about Jason’s killing.

“Over the course of approximately forty hours, plaintiff was beaten, threatened and coerced into signing a fifteen-page false confession prepared by police,” Jackson's lawsuit alleged.

The former Freeport resident had maintained his innocence for years, and he eventually received several key documents via a public records request: two previously unreleased eyewitness statements from the night of the killing.

Those witness statements came from two men — one of whom was an off-duty NYPD officer — who were in the area and saw the shooting. One statement described the perpetrator as a Black man, 5’9” to 5’10”, with a “dark brown face.”

Jackson, who is Black, is 6 feet tall, according to court records, with a light complexion.

Neither of those two eyewitnesses had testified at the trial, and both said later that they had not been contacted by prosecutors or defense attorneys at the time of the trial, according to court filings.

After examining the case, the Nassau County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit determined that the conviction was improper, and the DA asked a court to overturn it.

After a hearing on Feb. 16, 2018 in New York Supreme Court in Mineola, Justice Teresa Corrigan agreed.

“Let me say to Mr. Jackson only you know, sir, if you committed this crime,” Corrigan said at the hearing, according to a court transcript. “Regardless, an error in procedure has occurred and even an unintentional error cannot be overlooked by the criminal justice system.”

Jackson was released that day, after serving 23 years and 2 months in prison.

"I've been telling them I was innocent all along," Jackson told reporters outside the courthouse after his release. "But I couldn't find an ear to believe me."