At 7:27 p.m. on September 29, 2007, Latasha Shaw called 911 in Rochester, New York, asking police to accompany her and other family members to a house where she believed the people who had earlier attacked her daughter, Jasmine, were hiding.
The police had just left that house on Driving Park Avenue a few minutes earlier, and the 911 operator told Shaw not to proceed.
At Driving Park’s intersection with Dewey Avenue, Shaw and her small group were met by a mob of attackers swarming out of the house. According to witnesses, Shaw was set upon by a mob of assailants, thrown to the ground, and hit with sticks, bats, knives, and other weapons. She died that night.
By some estimates, nearly 100 people either saw or participated in the attack. The police received numerous 911 calls, including one from a young woman named Megan Torres, who saw the attack from a porch on Dewey Drive. Torres told the police that night that she was unable to identify any of the assailants.
Ebony Mack’s name had come up during the initial police investigation. Her mother lived at the house on Driving Park Avenue. The focus on Ebony led to the police department’s interest in her cousin, 29-year-old Terrance Mack. While most members of the mob were female, witnesses said some men also took part in the attack.
On October 24, 2007, Police Investigator John Penkitis met with Torres at her home and showed her six photo arrays, including one that contained a photo of Terrance Mack. Torres selected Mack’s photo, circled his picture, initialed the array, and wrote “That’s the guy” on the paper.
More than a year later, on November 4, 2008, police arrested Terrance Mack in Elmira, about two hours south of Rochester, and charged him with first-degree gang assault. Police arrested Ebony Mack on November 5, charging her with second-degree murder and other crimes.
Terrance Mack waived his Miranda rights and told investigators that he was in Elmira, where he lived with his girlfriend and young child, at the time of the attack on Shaw. He said he had heard about the incident from family members.
Paul Vacca Jr. was appointed to represent Mack, and he hired Geoffrey Resnick as an investigator to interview witnesses who could testify that Mack was not present at the time of the attack.
On February 25, 2009, Resnick, Vacca, and Mack met at the Monroe County Jail. Mack provided Vacca with the names of two potential alibi witnesses, including Travis White. Mack said he and White had been together in Elmira most of September 29, 2007. At the time of the meeting, White was incarcerated at a prison about an hour southwest of Buffalo. Resnick told Vacca on March 5, 2009, that the next available visitation date for White was on March 15, but Vacca did not follow up with instructions.
There was no physical or forensic evidence connecting Terrance Mack to the attack, and Torres was the only witness who had come forward to identify him as a participant in the attack. In addition, prosecutors had made little headway in checking out Mack’s alibi. Mack suggested that Torres view a physical line-up. The prosecutor agreed and said she would dismiss the indictment if Torres failed to identify Mack. Vacca asked for more time to discuss the proposal with his client.
Separately, Vacca moved to suppress Torres’s identification. A judge held a hearing on April 9, 2009, in Monroe County Supreme Court. Torres did not testify, but Penkitis testified about how the police tied Mack to the house on Driving Park Avenue. The state did not present any evidence that Mack ever lived at the house. A judge ruled that the state could ask Torres to make an in-court identification.
At the conclusion of the hearing, the state also changed the terms of the planned pre-trial physical lineup, after a jailhouse informant named Ronaldo Donald said that Mack had confessed his involvement in the attack.
The trial began on May 4, 2009.
During her opening statement, Assistant District Attorney Sandra Doorley told jurors that a group of 10 to 30 people came from the porch on Driving Park Avenue and set about to attack Shaw and the others in her group. In the initial seconds, Shaw dropped her cellphone, Doorley said. “The phone is on the ground,” Doorley said. “She was hit with a bottle by the defendant, Terrance Mack. She was held down by the defendant, Terrance Mack. Others in the gang beat her with sticks, others beat her with small bats and others had knives and beat her and stabbed her with knives … It was a melee in the truest sense of the word.”
Jasmine Shaw, Latasha’s daughter, was now 16 years old. She testified that 10 to 15 people came off the porch of the house. She said her mother told her to run, and she thought that a thrown bottle hit Latasha Shaw on the head. Jasmine said she turned around and saw the women surround her mother. She ran down Dewey Avenue to get help. She did not identify Terrance Mack.
Charnette Grayson, Latasha Shaw’s sister, said the group that came off the porch included both men and women, and they carried knives, house tools, and pieces of wood. She said that after Shaw fell, a man grabbed Shaw’s hood and held her down as others in the mob surrounded her. She testified that she did not recall seeing any bottles or broken glass. Grayson said she did not see the face of the man who held Shaw down.
Grayson said that after the attackers ran, she turned Shaw over and saw two knives.
Torres testified that “it was starting to get dark outside” when the attack on Shaw occurred. She said she saw the event from a friend’s porch, which was about 150 feet away from the spot where Shaw fell.
Torres said that when she heard “a lot of screaming back and forth between girls,” she turned toward the intersection and saw 20 to 25 people, men and women, carrying weapons and running toward Shaw. Torres said she called 911 and “was on the phone with the cops as [it] was happening.”
Torres testified that she didn’t see Shaw fall to the ground, but that she saw a man, whom she identified in court as Mack, hit Shaw in the head with a bottle. Torres had told police on the night of the attack that a woman had hit Shaw in the head with an object, maybe a bottle. At trial, she said that both a man and a woman hit Shaw with a bottle. She also testified that the bottle broke.
Torres said that 25 to 30 people surrounded Shaw, but that Terrance Mack was the only person she could clearly identify.
Torres’s direct examination made no mention of the photo array, because it wasn’t admissible under New York law. In her testimony, Torres didn’t describe the man who she said hit Shaw. But she said she knew Mack, although not by name, because she had seen him in the neighborhood “quite a few times,” which she later clarified as “more than once.”
During Vacca’s cross-examination, Torres testified that she told the police on the night of the attack that she could not identify anyone. He asked her if she changed her mind. Torres said yes. Vacca asked, “How does that happen?”
“Because the day that [the police officer] asked me, I was scared to identify anybody because I didn’t know who was watching or what was going on,” Torres said. “Once I talked to my dad, my dad told me that the right thing to do was to let them know what I saw.”
After Vacca asked Torres about selecting Mack from the photo array, Justice Frank Geraci Jr. ruled that Vacca had opened the door and allowed the prosecutor to present additional evidence about the array. Penkitis testified about Torres’s viewing of the photos, and how she circled a photo of Mack and wrote “That’s the guy.”
Two evidence technicians with the Rochester Police Department testified about the evidence collected at the crime scene, which included knives, a broken bat, and jewelry. Neither technician said they found any broken glass or bottle. In addition, Dr. Caroline Dignan, the Monroe County Medical Examiner, testified that Shaw died from a stab wound to the chest but had other stab wounds and blunt-force injuries to her head. Dignan said she did not find any glass or wood on Shaw’s body during the autopsy.
Donald testified that he knew Mack from middle or high school and that they had lived in the same neighborhood a few times. He said that on April 21, 2009, he began serving a sentence in the Monroe County Jail for first-degree robbery and that he ran into Mack the next day. He said that Mack told him that “all he really did was he ran off the porch, grabbed her and held her, and they did that to her.” Later, Donald said, Mack told him that “there was just one witness that could [possibly] identify him, but she wasn’t sure if it was him or his father because they look alike.”
Donald testified that he told a deputy about the conversation because he felt that it was the right thing to do. He said the only benefit he received was a promise from officials to move him to a jail in another county, although on cross-examination he said he was also trying to receive a reduction in his prison sentence.
The day after Donald testified, the jury heard a recording of a telephone call between Mack and his father, Anthony Jenkins, who appeared upset about Donald’s testimony. “But your problem is you want to run your mouth instead of just listen what somebody say you want to go off, you wanna go off with your own little self,” Jenkins told his son on the recording.
Kiona Speed testified for the defense that she had been part of the group of girls who got into a fight with Jasmine Shaw prior to the incident that left Latasha Shaw dead. Speed said she watched the fight from the porch on Driving Park Avenue and that Terrance Mack was not there. Although Speed’s mother had called 911, the police did not take a statement from Kiona until more than a year later, on December 10, 2008.
During cross-examination, Speed denied that she told the officers who took her statement that she did not witness Latasha Shaw’s death.
Two other women, Carolyn McHenry, Mack’s cousin, and Shatora Hampton, testified about the attack on Shaw. Both testified that Mack was not there. McHenry said the person who threw a bottle at Shaw was a woman but was dressed as a man. She saw the person’s face and knew that “it wasn’t no dude.”
Precious Scott, Terrance Mack’s aunt, testified that she was living in Elmira in September 2007, and that Terrance and his girlfriend, Jessica Smith, lived there as well with their infant daughter. She said that she saw Terrance about 11 a.m. or noon that day, when he and White came and brought her some fast food. She also said that she talked to Terrance later that day, around 5:30 or 6 p.m., and that he was in Elmira. She said she knew her nephew wasn’t in Rochester, because the phones they used didn’t work there.
Smith testified that she was working on September 29 and that Mack watched their daughter. He was there when she returned home at about 7:30 p.m. The couple did not have a car, and Smith had taken a cab to work. Smith had told investigators that she had spoken to Mack, but the telephone records didn’t show any calls between her job and her apartment during the time she was at work.
Mack testified that he was in Elmira on September 29, 2007, caring for his daughter while Smith worked. He testified that he saw White and Scott that day. He denied admitting to Donald any involvement in Shaw’s death and said their conversation at the jail was about a woman. He also denied Donald’s claim that they had gone to school together.
During cross-examination, the prosecutor asked Mack if he had looked at the crime reports and the statements of witnesses. Mack said he was a bad student and didn’t know how to read.
He said he didn’t remember his telephone conversation with his father because he was so stressed.
After Mack’s testimony, the state presented several rebuttal witnesses, including Samuel Soprano, an investigator with the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office. Soprano testified that he met with Smith in January 2009, and that she told him about her calls to Mack on September 29, 2007. Soprano said he reviewed the records of Smith’s landline and did not see any calls on the landline while Smith was at work. On cross-examination, Soprano said he did not write down notes about his interview with Smith. He also said he never obtained phone records from Smith’s employer.
During its deliberations, the jury sent out three notes to the judge. One asked about the meaning of reasonable doubt and the importance of a single witness versus multiple witnesses. The second wanted a readback of Torres’s testimony about Mack leaving the crime scene. The third note asked for a cigarette break. Justice Geraci granted the break and said he would respond to the other requests. The jury resumed its deliberations at 8:10 p.m. on May 8, 2009, and the jury then returned with a verdict, convicting Mack of first-degree gang assault.
On June 10, 2009, Vacca moved to set aside the verdict based on both insufficient evidence and new evidence, contained in an affidavit from Travis White. Vacca said that White had been listed as a “potential alibi witness” but “could not be located with the usual effort” by Resnick.
White said in the affidavit that he had just been released from prison on May 7, 2009, and learned two days later from his mother that Mack had been convicted.
He said: “I told her I was with Tarrance (sic) on the day the lady was killed in Rochester. Tarrance and I were together that day. He was taking care of his daughter while his girlfriend was at work.”
White said that Mack learned about Shaw’s death that day from his relatives in Rochester. He said: “Tarrance did not have a driver (sic) license or vehicle. If he wanted to go to Rochester he had to find a ride to Rochester and back to Elmira—Tarrance mostly stayed in Elmira.”
On June 17, 2009, Justice Geraci denied the motion to set aside the verdict and sentenced Mack to 25 years in prison.
A month later, on July 24, 2009, a jury acquitted Ebony Mack of second-degree murder and her other charges.
Terrance Mack appealed, arguing Geraci erred in letting the jury continue its deliberations without providing a response to the jury notes. The New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, Fourth Department, granted Mack a new trial on May 2, 2014, but the New York Court of Appeals reinstated the conviction on June 7, 2016.
On January 13, 2017, Mack filed a motion for a new trial. He said that the state had failed to disclose impeachment evidence against Grayson and had failed to provide notice of its intent to call Soprano as an alibi rebuttal witness.
In addition, the motion said Vacca had provided ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to: investigate and call White as an alibi witness; call other witnesses, such as Bessie Mack, Ebony Mack’s mother, who could support Mack’s alibi; consult with or call an expert witness on the science of memory and perception; educate the jurors on problems with cross-racial identification; and adequately cross-examine Torres about the inconsistencies between her testimony and her 911 call. The motion also said Vacca’s questions to Torres had allowed the prosecution to introduce Torres’s identification of Mack in the photo array.
At an evidentiary hearing, Vacca testified that he spoke to Mack’s other potential alibi witnesses and chose not to call them because of inconsistencies with their accounts. He said he did not call White after Mack told him not to because of White’s incarceration. Although Vacca had said in the motion to set aside the verdict that White could not be located, he said at the evidentiary hearing, “I did not remember Resnick’s indication that he was at this boot camp.”
Resnick testified that he did not recall Mack having reservations about using White as a witness. He said he would have written that down.
White testified at the hearing, and prosecutors cross-examined him about his affidavit and his testimony, which was often sparse on details about his and Mack’s activity on September 29, 2007.
Mack also testified and said that he never told Vacca that he did not want White to testify.
Justice Christopher Ciaccio denied Mack’s motion on May 11, 2018. The ruling criticized Vacca and said that his failure to use White was more likely due to neglect than bad strategy and that his explanation of why he didn’t use White was the “product of [a] not entirely accurate recollection of what his thinking was prior to trial.” Although the ruling called White an “indispensable witness,” Justice Ciaccio said, “It is doubtful that White’s testimony, had he testified at trial, would have made a difference.” He said that White’s demeanor at the evidentiary hearing “did not inspire a perception of integrity and honest respect for the truth.”
The ruling also said that Vacca had not been ineffective in failing to call the alibi support witnesses, because of their potential credibility issues and relationship to Mack.
Mack appealed the ruling, arguing that Justice Ciaccio improperly limited the scope of the evidentiary hearing. On June 17, 2021, the Fourth Department agreed and ordered a more extensive hearing, which Justice Michael Dollinger held on February 18 and April 22, 2022.
Dr. Charles Brainerd, a psychology professor at Cornell University, testified as an expert witness on memory and cognition. He said Torres’s testimony at trial and before the grand jury was riddled with false memories, recollections that didn’t align with the known facts. Torres testified that she saw people leave the porch on Driving Park Avenue to attack Shaw. But Brainerd said Torres couldn’t see the porch from where she was on Dewey Avenue. Similarly, Torres said she was on her cellphone with the police during the attack, but the 911 records showed the call took place after the attack.
Brainerd testified that people often cling tightly to false memories. “People, when they are having a false memory, will oftentimes—it will be accompanied by a very vivid imagery and [the] sound and sights of real experience will be imported into it,” he said.
Vacca testified at this hearing that he lacked education or training about human memory and that he didn’t consult with a memory expert during trial preparation. He said, “[If] I don’t understand it, how’s the jury going to understand it.” Vacca said his defense was built around Mack’s alibi rather than Torres’s mistaken identification.
Justice Dollinger denied Mack’s motion on January 25, 2023. He agreed with Justice Ciaccio’s earlier ruling that White’s testimony would not have made a difference. He also said that Vacca’s decision not to consult with or call an expert witness on memory was not ineffective assistance of counsel. He said that Torres testified that she knew Mack from the neighborhood, and that her identification was corroborated by Donald’s testimony and by what he called the “implicit confession” made by Mack to his father in the recorded jailhouse call.
Mack then turned to the federal courts, filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York on April 19, 2024. The petition reasserted many of the claims Mack made in his new-trial motions in state court.
The petition said Vacca’s testimony that he bowed to Mack’s request not to investigate White as an alibi witness was “especially egregious,” based on Mack’s difficulty reading and his classification as a special-education student.
Judge John Sinatra Jr. denied Mack’s petition on December 4, 2025. His 192-page decision rejected Mack’s extensive claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. Judge Sinatra agreed with the state-court rulings that White was not a credible witness. He said White had an interest in seeing Mack avoid a conviction, and “it would not have been difficult for the prosecutor to make White appear biased on cross-examination.”
In April 2025, while the habeas petition was pending, Mack asked the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) of the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office to reinvestigate his case.
Based on that review, Mack and prosecutors agreed to re-open his original state motion for a new trial. Judge Dollinger granted a motion to vacate the conviction and dismiss the charge on July 6, 2026.
“On reviewing his investigation, it was clear that this office had information in its file, some of which was known to Mr. Mack’s trial attorney, but none of which was known by his appellate attorneys,” Monroe County District Attorney Brian Green said. “They did not have it in their possession while they were arguing his appeal, his [state] motion, or his habeas corpus motion.”
Green did not disclose the new information. The case files have been sealed.
Mack was released from prison on July 7, 2026.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 07-31-2026
