Plea deal frees killer who served 19 years
Former Shawangunk resident fatally stabbed wife in 1997
A former Shawangunk resident convicted of the 1997 stabbing death of his wife has been released from prison 19 years after being incarcerated for a brutal attack.
Vincent Zeh was released from the Wyoming Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in Attica, on May 16, the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said Thursday.
He was released after serving 19 years of his 12.5-to-25-year sentence of manslaughter. The 78-year-old will remain on parole until May 2022.
Zeh was convicted in 1998 of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the April 11, 1997, fatal stabbing of his estranged wife, Kimberly. Zeh stabbed her wife 22 times at the Walker Valley home of her sister-in-law, where she had been babysitting.
Zeh appealed his conviction, arguing that his defense attorney at the 1998 trial, Michael Sussman, failed to attempt to suppress some of the evidence, thereby depriving Zeh of his constitutional right to meaningful legal repre-
sentation. Sussman said his decision to not try to get the evidence suppressed was a strategic decision, not the result of his ineffectiveness as counsel.
The case made its way through the courts for 18 years until the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, Third Department, ruled in Zeh’s favor last November and ordered the trial court to hold hearings to determine whether evidence gathered by police should have been admitted
at trial.
In its decision, the appeals court also ruled that if any part of the evidence was suppressed following the hearing, Zeh would be entitled to a new trial.
Dutchess County Assistant District Attorney Robert Knapp, the special prosecutor in the case, said Thursday that due to the potential risks involved in retrying the decades-old crime, Zeh was offered a deal to plead guilty to manslaughter, which he took.
“In light of the legal issues and the issues associated with attempting to try a 20-year-old case, we felt it was an appropriate way
to handle it at that state of the proceedings,” Knapp said.
Zeh was released after entering his plea, having served about six years more than the minimum sentence for manslaughter and six years less than the maximum. He currently lives in Niagara County, in western New York state, according to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
After his wife’s death, Zeh was questioned by police at his home and then for 26 hours at a state police barracks without a lawyer present and in a room that may have been
locked at times, according to court papers. Additionally, police seized significant evidence, including faded blood found on a sneaker, a sweatshirt and the back of Zeh’s underwear. No blood was found on his pants, however
Attorney Normam Effman, who represented Zeh on appeal, said if the suppression hearings had gone forward, he would have sought to keep the prosecution from being able to use any of the evidence gathered during the 26-hour interrogation or evidence collected with the six separate search warrants that were issued.