Three men to be cleared of boy’s murder after 36 years in prison
THREE men convicted of killing a schoolboy in 1983 are to be freed from prison after US prosecutors concluded they are all innocent.
Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins, and Andrew Stewart were teenagers when they were convicted of shooting Dewitt Duckett, 14, in a school corridor in Baltimore.
They have each spent 36 years in prison making the cumulative total of 108 years the longest ever jail term for a single crime in the United States.
The case was re-examined by the Conviction Integrity Unit, which was established at the Baltimore state attorney’s office in 2015.
“It’s been a nightmare from the beginning,” Chestnut, 52, told The Washington Post. “Even though it was a struggle, I never gave up.”
Marilyn Mosby, a Baltimore prosecutor involved in re-examining the case, said: “I’m sorry. The system failed them. They should have never had to see the inside of a jail cell.”
The review found that several witnesses had identified the gunman at the time as 18-year-old Michael Willis.
He had been seen running from the scene and throwing away a handgun.
One witness said he had confessed. Another saw him later wearing the dead teenager’s Georgetown University jacket.
The witnesses accounts were not given to the defence at the trial. Willis went on to be arrested numerous times for drug and assault offences.
He died in a shooting in Baltimore in 2002 at the age of 37.
A prison encounter between Mr Watkins and a police officer involved in the original case was witnessed in 1988 by David Simon, who went on to create the crime drama The Wire.
According to Simon, Mr Watkins said to the officer: “How the hell do you sleep at night?” The officer replied: “You did it.” Mr Watkins countered: “The hell I did.”
Prosecutors said they would go to court within days to ask a judge for writs of actual innocence and to order the release of the three men who were handed life sentences.
The state of Maryland does not have a system to compensate victims of miscarriages of justice, so it was unclear whether they would be paid damages.