A Durham judge threw out a 1995 double-murder conviction Wednesday for Darryl Howard.
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Darryl Howard walked out of the Durham County jail on Wednesday afternoon, and he and his wife walked hand-in-hand in front of the courthouse.
The couple married three years after Howard’s imprisonment.
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. “I am hopeful that the DA’s office will not re-try the case”, said Seema Saifee, a staff attorney with the Innocence Project, who worked on Howard’s case.
North Carolina prosecutors have decided not appeal a judge’s order throwing out the double-murder conviction of a man who spent 21 years in prison, clearing the way for his immediate release.
The judge threw out the convictions and ordered Darryl Howard’s release because of DNA evidence unavailable at Howard’s 1995 murder trial. But prosecutors appealed at the time, and a state appeals court ruled this spring that Hudson failed to hear enough evidence before making a decision. The North Carolina man was sentenced to serve an 80-year sentence at a Warren County prison.
At the time of the trial, prosecutors built a case against Mr Howard that relied on testimony from witnesses, including claims that he had had an argument with the mother some time before her death.
Darryl Howard’s release came in the wake of insufficient evidence.
They argued that despite what police and prosecutors presented to the jury in 1995 that Washington and her daughter had been sexually assaulted and murdered before someone set fire to their apartment. Whoever did assault Nishonda hasn’t been identified. “The only silver lining here is that this was not a capital conviction, because, had it been, Mr. Howard, an innocent man, might not be here today”, said Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project.
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Jones on Tuesday refused to answer questions from Howard’s attorneys, citing his constitutional right against incriminating himself.
