New York man freed after 19 years in prison for robbery he didn't commit
[March 17, 2026]
By JENNIFER PELTZ
NEW YORK (AP) — A man who spent nearly two decades in prison for a
roughly $550 robbery was exonerated and freed Monday, after prosecutors
said they now agree he didn't commit the crime.
“It cost me 20 years, but they said they corrected it now. So that's all
that matters. So I’m good with that,” Kenneth Windley, 61, said as he
left a Brooklyn courthouse, at liberty for the first time since 2007.
A judge threw out his conviction and dismissed his case entirely, at the
request of both prosecutors and Windley's lawyers. Prosecutors said new
evidence — including confessions from two other men who were convicted
of similar robberies — supported his longstanding claim of innocence.
“This case is really a cautionary tale of how things can seem one way
but, without careful analysis, not be what it purports to be," Brooklyn
District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, a Democrat, said after shaking
Windley's hand outside court.
“Had we known what the evidence was, this case should have never
happened,” he said, adding that he had apologized privately to Windley.
Windley was arrested in 2005 after buying a stove for his mother with a
money order that turned out to be stolen.
It had been snatched from Gerald Ross, 70, by two thieves who followed
him home from a trip to a bank and a post office. The thieves put Ross
in a chokehold and took money orders, cash, and a bank book from him,
prosecutors said in a report released Monday.
Ross regularly got money orders for his rent and life insurance payments
at that post office, which helped him and the authorities follow a paper
trail after the robbery. The trail soon led to Windley, who had given
his name, driver’s license and address when purchasing the stove at an
appliance store.
From the start, Windley said he had nothing to do with the robbery. He
said he'd simply bought a $542.77 money order at a discount from a
couple of acquaintances, who insisted that it was valid but that they
couldn't use it for a bureaucratic reason.
“He was duped," one of Windley's lawyers, David Shanies, told the court
Monday.
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Kenneth Windley, left, leaves a courthouse with his mother, Francina
Windley Patterson, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Monday,
March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Jennifer Peltz)
Ross identified Windley as one of the thieves from a photo array and
then a live lineup, both of them six weeks or longer after the
robbery. Windley testified at his trial, telling jurors how his
acquaintances had approached him and sold him the money order. But
the jury convicted him in 2007 of robbery. Because of prior felony
convictions, he was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. His
appeals failed.
Early on, Windley told prosecutors what he knew about the men who
sold him the money order: their nicknames and some information about
their legal names. After his conviction, a friend and private
investigators helped him flesh out the men's identities and persuade
them to come forward about what had happened, according to the
D.A.’s report.
In sworn statements and then in interviews with D.A.'s office
representatives, the two men said that they had robbed Ross together
and that Windley was not involved, according to the report. It
called their admissions “compelling.”
It doesn’t give their names, referring to them only as “Suspect 1”
and “Suspect 2.” Both are serving prison time on other robbery
convictions, according to the D.A.’s office. Those convictions all
involved male victims in their 60s and older who were followed home
from banks and check-cashing offices in Brooklyn in 2005 and 2006.
If the jury had known those men's identities and robbery records,
the information would likely have raised reasonable doubt about the
charge against Windley, prosecutors concluded.
No new charges have been brought in the case. The legal time frame
for bringing charges ran out years ago, and Ross has died.
Windley, heading off Monday afternoon to celebrate with his family,
said he wasn't bitter about what he'd been through.
“I’m just going to move on from there,” he said.
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