That’s when 14-year-old Davontae Sanford supposedly confessed to murdering four people. “His mom was screaming and crying and every emotion you can imagine pouring out of her”. She said that “seriously undermines” the entire case.
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A MI court threw out the convictions and sentence of a man who was 14 when he pleaded guilty to a 2007 quadruple homicide in Detroit that a professional hit man later confessed to committing, prosecutors and defense attorneys said on Tuesday. Here, a 14-year-old kid confessed to a crime he did not commit only after he had been interrogated repeatedly over the course of two days without an attorney, or even a parent, present.
It was a remarkable reversal by prosecutor Kym Worthy who had long resisted efforts to revisit the convictions until law schools at the University of MI and Northwestern University and other pro bono lawyers got involved in 2015.
David Moran, director of the Innocence Clinic at University of MI law school, said Sanford’s time in prison reflected a “complete breakdown” in the criminal justice system. “His confession made little sense and got more wrong than right”.
The report, which prosecutors plan to discuss in greater detail on Thursday, alleges that former Detroit Police Deputy Chief James Tolbert committed perjury when he testified that Sanford drew a diagram of the crime scene in its entirety, including the location of the victims’ bodies, during his interrogation. They took him in, and believed he had key information.
“I feel blessed”, said Sanford’s mother, Taminko Sanford, who stayed behind to greet her son at home. Police, however, ran with his confessions.
According to reports, two weeks after his confession, Vincent Smothers, a self- described hitman, came forward and admitted to the crime, showed authorities where to find the murder weapon, and admitted Sanford has nothing to do with the killings.
He plead guilty to four counts of second degree homicide on the advice of an attorney, who is now suspended from the practice of law.
In 2014, pro bono attorneys took on the case.
March 2009: Appellate lawyer Kim McGinnis asks a judge to throw out Sanford’s conviction after learning about Smothers’ confession.
Wayne County Judge Brian Sullivan on Tuesday vacated the 2008 conviction of Davontae Sanford who had been serving a 37- to 90-year sentence for the quadruple homicide.
“Davontae’s family, friends and supporters knew from the outset that he was innocent and wrongfully convicted”, Sanford’s family said in a statement. “Recognizing the importance of that testimony, attorneys from the Prosecutor’s Office worked with Sanford’s attorneys from Dykema Gossett to move to dismiss his case”.
Sanford’s impending release would add him to a growing list of convicted Americans later found to have been wrongly imprisoned.
More than 1,810 exonerations have been recorded in the United States since 1989, for murder and other crimes, and the pace has increased steadily over the years to about three a week, according to the National Registry of Exonerations run by the University of Michigan Law School.
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“I doubt if I get any sleep tonight, tomorrow will absolutely be the best day of my life”. “He has a very, very strong foundation, and a very, very strong family support that he has the tools to be successful”.
