ALBANY – A 57-year-old man who spent nearly three decades in state prison after being wrongly convicted in 1998 on charges of attempting to fatally shoot two Albany police officers has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city and two detectives who led the investigation.

Corey Young, who now lives in Schenectady, was 29 when he was sentenced to 57½ years to life in prison after an Albany County jury convicted him of attempted murder for allegations that he had participated in a robbery and then fired a gun at two Albany police officers during a foot pursuit. An appellate court later reduced Young’s sentence to 37½ years to life in prison.

Detectives claimed he was the suspect in the botched armed robbery that took place in February 1995 in West Hill. It culminated with a shootout with two city police officers along Second Avenue in Albany. The wounded suspect, who was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, ran away after the shooting, but left a blood trail that detectives believed would help them identify the person through testing of blood type and DNA. The two officers who were fired upon were not injured.

For several months following the shooting, multiple potential suspects were identified by city detectives either from witness statements or from information circulating in the community about the incident. But forensic testing determined none of those suspects’ blood matched the blood trail left by the shooter, and the case languished for more than a year.

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In 1996, then-city detectives Kenneth P. Wilcox and Anthony Ryan – who often worked together on investigations – interviewed more than half a dozen people, including some who were incarcerated and agreed to sign statements claiming Young had confessed to being shot during the shootout with the two police officers.

But forensic tests had excluded Young as the person whose blood trail was left at the shooting scene. Still, the Albany County District Attorney’s Office went forward with his prosecution and a judge rejected the defense attorney’s motion to dismiss the case based on the DNA results.

Based largely on the accounts of three purported witnesses interviewed by Wilcox and Ryan, a jury convicted Young of multiple counts of attempted murder, as well as attempted aggravated assault against a police officer, criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment and robbery.

In April, Young was released from prison following a court proceeding in which he was found to be innocent of the crime. The district attorney’s office had an integral role in that outcome and District Attorney Lee Kindlon told the Times Union their office “came to the conclusion that he did not likely get a fair trial.”

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Albany by Young also names as defendants the estate of Wilcox, who died in 2006 in a one-car crash while on duty, and Ryan, who retired from the department as a commander in 2013. He is chief of investigations for the state Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs.

Previously: Albany police’s legacy of wrongful convictions continues to grow 

The lawsuit details how three key prosecution witnesses recanted their statements implicating Young in recent years, all saying they had been coerced to give those statements by Ryan and Wilcox. The complaint also notes that the blood tests which had excluded Young as the unknown person who had fired at the police officers should have ended the criminal case against him.

Young “lost nearly three decades of his life behind bars before he was exonerated,” the petition states. “This lawsuit is brought to hold those responsible for his unjust incarceration accountable.”

The civil complaint was filed by Young’s attorney, Joshua D. Kelner, who had represented other defendants who were found to have been wrongly convicted of crimes, including murder, based on investigations led by Wilcox and other Albany detectives. The lawsuit seeks $80 million in damages.

At his sentencing nearly 28 years ago, Young’s family erupted in the courtroom and some were escorted out of the courtroom by sheriff’s deputies as one of the relatives chanted, “Wrong man, wrong man. … Who speaks on his behalf?”

The investigation that led to the prosecution and conviction of Young is among a series of cases in which defendants have been released from prison after new evidence emerged that cast doubt on their guilt.

The cases have also exposed the questionable tactics of Albany detectives, who in the 1990s and early 2000s were known to use coercive tactics to get signed confessions from suspects. Those same tactics also were used by certain detectives to obtain incriminating statements from witnesses who were sometimes threatened that they or their family members might face legal peril if they did not implicate the suspects who were in the crosshairs of the police.

The overturning of the conviction of Young adds to the tainted legacy Wilcox, who was once revered for his ability to get suspects – especially in homicide cases – to sign typewritten confessions. Other former city detectives had also used those same tactics to obtain the convictions that have been exposed over time as injustices.

Kindlon, a former criminal defense attorney who was elected district attorney two years ago, had noted in April that his office did not oppose Young’s motion to have his conviction dismissed.

“The district attorney’s office has an obligation not merely to secure convictions, but to ensure that the convictions we stand behind are just,” Kindlon said after the conviction was vacated. “When evidence calls a conviction into question, we have both a legal and a moral duty to take that seriously. That is what we did here.”

At the time of his death, Wilcox and his longtime business partner, former Albany Urban League Executive Director Aaron Dare, were the focus of federal and state investigations involving years of systematic mortgage fraud that had fueled their lavish lifestyles. Wilcox was posthumously implicated in the mortgage crimes; Dare was later convicted of multiple state and federal charges and spent years in prison.

Kelner said that Wilcox has always been a focus of alleged police corruption in Albany, but he believes others, including Ryan, were just as culpable.