MAN FREED AFTER JUDGE TOSSES CONVICTION
A 35-year-old man who was sent to prison as a teenager for the 2004 killing of a man in a Minneapolis flower shop was set free Monday after a judge ruled the eyewitness evidence on which his conviction rested was unreliable.
Marvin Haynes, who was 16 at the time of the killing and had spent most of his life behind bars, was released from prison shortly after the judge’s ruling.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said it agreed with defense attorneys that admitting the shaky evidence violated his constitutional rights during his 2005 trial for the killing of Randy Sherer, 55, who was shot during a robbery.
“I just want to thank everybody that supported me through this whole journey,” Haynes told reporters outside the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater. “And now y’all can recognize that I’m actually innocent.”
Haynes later appeared at a news conference at the courthouse in Minneapolis with his attorneys, family members and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty. He said his next step would be to visit his mother, who had not been able to visit him in prison for the last three or four years since suffering a stroke. He said he now hopes to get a job and get his life back in order. And he recalled how he got the news on his birthday last Wednesday that Moriarty had agreed his conviction should be set aside.
“I shed tears,” he said. “I haven’t cried so much in 19 years. I’m so excited. Overwhelmed with emotion.”
Moriarty told reporters she concluded after reviewing the case records that Haynes was innocent and his prosecution was a “terrible injustice.” She said his conviction depended almost entirely on eyewitness identification and there was no forensic evidence, such as fingerprints or DNA, nor video connecting him to the crime.
“We inflicted harm on Mr. Haynes and his family, and also on Randy Sherer, the victim, his family, and the community,” Moriarty said. “We cannot undo the trauma experienced by those impacted by this prosecution. But today we have taken a step towards righting this wrong.”