A USA judge has thrown out the double-murder conviction of Darryl Howard, who spent 21 years in jail. The prosecutors discarded the conviction and let Howard walk out as a free man after 21 years.
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Darryl Howard with his wife Nannie, right, leave the Durham County Detention Center victorious with their lawyers and family after a judge threw out Howard’s conviction in a double-murder case tried 21 years ago and ordered Howard’s release because of DNA evidence unavailable at his 1995 murder trial, in Durham, N.C. Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2016.
He left the jail with his wife, Nannie, whom he married three years after he was incarcerated.
The 54-year-old Howard had been serving an 80-year sentence.
In a three-day hearing this week, Barry Scheck, co-director of the New York -based Innocence Project, Seema Saifee, a staff attorney for the Innocence Project, and Jim Cooney, a Charlotte attorney who helped with the case, offered a different theory about what happened to the mother and daughter than prosecutors presented at trial in 1995.
But prosecutors decided not to appeal the judge’s order quashing the conviction, which meant he did not have to take to the stand.
The decision by the Durham County District Attorney’s office brings to a close a three-day hearing on whether there was enough evidence to keep Darryl Howard in prison. Judge Orlando Hudson ordered him freed after hearing testimony on whether evidence could have proved Howard’s innocence was withheld by prosecutors and police.
Mike Nifong, the former district attorney in the Duke, case was expected to explain to the court how he arrived at his verdict in 1995.
The judge threw out the convictions and ordered Darryl Howard’s release because of DNA evidence unavailable at Howard’s 1995 murder trial.
“I told them I didn’t do it”, said Howard after his release.
Howard’s attorneys argued that DNA evidence, some of which wasn’t tested until 2010, implicated two other men and cleared Howard.
But a second look at the case by the Innocence Project showed that police and prosecutors had a police memo in their files that contradicted that.
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The judge had first ordered Howard’s release from prison two years ago.
