Exoneration of the Day - Man Wrongly Accused Serves 35 Years

Posted By Imhoff & Associates || 10-Jun-2016

Happy Friday everyone, our latest exoneration of the day whereby someone was wrongly convicted for 35 years for a crime he did not commit.

Freedom is priceless but inadequately protecting that freedom can be costlier than any amount of attorney fees. A 19-year-old man gambled his freedom on a court-appointed criminal defense attorney and paid dearly for that risk. He was charged with armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, and criminal sexual conduct in the first degree ...after a pregnant student at Wayne State University was forcefully raped at gunpoint in an on-campus washroom.

The trial only lasted a few hours and ended in a conviction. He was sentenced to life in prison shortly thereafter. His under-experienced defense attorney had failed to request an analysis of fingerprints collected at the scene, did not raise the issue that her client was not a blood type match for the semen sample collected, and did not even notice that her client had actually been in police custody when the crime was committed. These issues were raised in appeals for years to no avail until finally he acquired new criminal defense assistance that ordered a fingerprint analysis. The prints matched another man, who was in prison for committing similar crimes during the same period on the Wayne State campus.

In light of this evidence, his conviction was finally vacated and he was exonerated after serving a whopping 35 years for a crime he had not committed.

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3091
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