Two men who had spent decades in jail for separate murders in New York City were exonerated on Monday after reinvestigations revealed that they had been convicted based on untrustworthy witness evidence.
49-year-old Jabar Walker was found not guilty of a 1995 double homicide while he was serving a 25-year to life sentence.
Wayne Gardine, 49, who had been found guilty of a murder in 1994 but was granted parole the previous year, has also been exonerated. However, he has been charged with entering the United States illegaly when he was a juvenile, and is therefore being held in immigration detention before being sent back to his home country of Jamaica.
The two crimes occurred in Harlem, eight blocks apart, and both convictions were overturned when defense attorneys collaborated with the conviction review section of the Manhattan district attorney’s office to exonerate the men.
Walker’s case was reopened when it was discovered that police had coerced a witness to implicate Walker by threatening to prosecute him with the shootings if he did not comply. Subsequently, the witness denied ever testifying. The Innocence Project claims that a different witness who claimed to have witnessed the shootings was compensated financially by the district attorney’s office.
“Mr. Walker received a sentence that could have kept him in prison for his entire life,” Manhattan’s District Attorney Alvin Bragg stated. “I am thrilled that he can now finally return home and thank the Innocence Project for its steadfast advocacy throughout this matter.”
Gardine was 20 years old when he was arrested for the murder of Robert Mickens, who was shot nearly a dozen times.
His conviction was overturned following a reinvestigation by the Legal Aid Society and the district attorney’s office, which discovered that the lone eyewitness who testified during the trial had blamed Gardine for the murder in order to appease his own drug boss, who was acquainted with the victim.
After speding 29 years in prison, Gardine is now currently being held in immigration detention in upstate New York and may be deported. Lou Fox, Gardine’s Legal Aid Society counsel, stated that his client ought to be freed as he disputes having entered the nation unlawfully.
“We are elated that Mr. Gardine will finally have his name cleared of this conviction that has haunted him for nearly three decades, yet he is still not a free man and faces additional and unwarranted punishment if deported,” Fox said in a statement.
