Suspects Quickly Arrested After Bodies Discovered
On February 29, 2024, a teen spotted a severed arm in a park in Babylon, N.Y., while on their way to school. A search found more body parts, those of a man and a woman, in the park. The victims were soon identified as Conneely and Brown.
The brutality of the crime drew attention from the start. Wendy Regoeczi, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, "I've read a lot of homicide files over the years in my own research, and very, very few of them involve dismembering."
Mackey and Nieves were arrested on March 4 on charges that included tampering with physical evidence and concealment of a corpse, but they were released because the accused offenses were non-bail eligible. Additional remains were found the day after the arrests in a state park and a wooded area in West Babylon.
In April 2024, murder charges were filed against Mackey and Nieves. Prosecutors said that on February 27, in their shared home in Amityville, N.Y., Mackey stabbed Brown in the neck and torso and strangled Conneely. Both Mackey and Nieves also stabbed Conneely, and Nieves beat her with a meat tenderizer. According to prosecutors, the victims were then dismembered in a bathroom. Mackey was charged with two counts of second-degree murder for killing Conneely and Brown, and Nieves faced one count of second-degree murder for Conneely's death. They both pleaded not guilty and were taken into custody.
Per prosecutors, the knife that stabbed Brown and Conneely was also used in a gas station robbery that took place seven days before the murders. Allegedly, Mackey and a third couple who lived in the Amityville house, Brown's cousin Steven Brown and Amanda Wallace, participated in the robbery, which the murder victims allegedly helped to plan. In April 2024, a prosecutor told the court a dispute about the robbery may have led to the murders.
The Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act Is Applied
"In order to sentence or resentence someone under the DVSJA, a court must find that they were subjected to substantial physical, sexual or psychological abuse," Kate Mogulescu, a professor of clinical law and director of the Criminal Defense & Advocacy Clinic at Brooklyn Law School, tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
One of Mackey's attorneys, Anthony La Pinta, told NBC 4, "Jeffrey Mackey and his wife were physically, emotionally and financially abused by the victims. Those facts brought up and motivated these crimes."
Alexandra Harrington, a professor at the University at Buffalo School of Law and director of the Criminal Justice Advocacy Clinic, tells A&E Crime + Investigation the court had to take the nature of the crime into account when sentencing Mackey.
Nieves pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree manslaughter and received a sentence of 11 years with five years of post-release supervision.
"Nieves was convicted of manslaughter but not sentenced under the DVSJA,” Mogulescu notes. “If she had been, her maximum sentence would have been five years."
However, Nieves' defense attorney Christopher Gioe said abuse played a factor in her sentencing.
"There were issues of domestic violence that were utilized as a potential defense, and as a result of that, we were able to work out a disposition in this manner of the time frames that both defendants received," Gioe said, per Newsday.
Were the Sentences Just?
"While the crimes that were committed were violent and tragic, justice in this case required balancing accountability for the harm caused with recognition of the documented abuse history which we cannot comment on," Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said in a statement after Mackey and Nieves submitted their pleas, as reported by the New York Post.
Mogulescu says the DVSJA was correctly used in this case.
"The legislature enacted the DVSJA and intended for it to apply to some of the most serious offenses in New York's Penal Law, including most homicides,” she says. "It is these charges that result in survivors facing long prison terms, and that was precisely what legislators aimed to change."
The report about Mackey's abuse was sealed, which Mogulescu says isn't an unusual move.
"Courts around the state have been protective of survivors' information and have rightfully sealed filings," she says, adding that there are "real safety risks to survivors who come forward and disclose abuse."
But Regoeczi notes that sealing information like this presents a "challenge of balancing the rights of the victim or, in this case, the perpetrator's right to privacy, against the needs of the family members of those homicide victims to understand the rationale behind the sentencing."
She adds, "If they feel like the sentence was not just, that will just further add to the trauma."
