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The 12 vacaturs were announced on Wednesday, Nov. 13 by the Westchester County District Attorney's Office, which reviewed the cases based on the perjury conviction of former Yonkers Police Detective Christian Koch in 2015.
According to the DA's Office, an examination by the DA's Conviction Review Unit resulted in Westchester County Court Justice Larry Schwartz and Yonkers City Court Justice Arthur Doran vacating five felony and seven misdemeanor convictions out of Yonkers between 2011 and 2014 that were "conclusively tainted by Koch's compromised credibility."
These included:
- Five people who pleaded guilty to felony charges of criminal possession of a controlled substance and attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance between December 2011 and April 2014. These defendants served sentences ranging from one year in jail to five years probation;
- Seven people who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges ranging from disorderly conduct to criminal possession of a controlled substance. These defendants served sentences ranging from four months in jail to three years probation.
All 12 of these convictions were a result of prosecutions that relied on sworn statements or a signed search warrant affidavit by former Detective Koch regarding narcotics transactions between a confidential informant and the accused defendants who were then arrested, the DA's Office said.
Factual discrepancies in these search warrant affidavits sworn to by Koch between December 2010 and March 2012 were later found by the Conviction Review Unit.
The examination also referenced Koch's testimony in a 2014 civil suit that he had used "template" language that he did not actually write in warrant applications to establish the informant's reliability instead of actual information about their reliability and work.
Koch had indicated that he did not understand that he was taking responsibility for the truth and facts in an affidavit during the lawsuit, officials said.
Koch eventually pleaded guilty to one count of perjury in April 2015 connected to one of these affidavits from March 2014. He was sentenced in September 2015 to eight weekends of incarceration.
He resigned from the Yonkers Police Department when he was sentenced. Koch originally joined the department in 2001.
The DA's Office conducted a previous investigation of Koch-related cases that resulted in five vacaturs in May 2018. However, this second examination was initiated after the DA's Office determined that this review had been "too narrow."
In addition to Koch-related cases, the DA's Office also reviewed cases involving former Yonkers Detective Sean Fogarty, who was also convicted of perjury in December 2019. However, the review determined there were "insufficient grounds" for the vacatur of any more convictions involving Fogarty because of a "dearth of information in the DA’s Office and Yonkers PD files," officials said.
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