On the 19th local time, a 30-year-old man, Darien Harris, was released from the Cook County Prison in Illinois, USA, who has spent 12 years in prison. A week before he graduated from high school, he was wrongfully convicted by the court of **Case** and sentenced to 76 years in prison.
What's even more outrageous is that in 2018, his ** lawyer Mueller was surprised to find that the main witness summoned by the prosecution in court that year turned out to be a blind man. After he reported the discovery to the county prosecutor, they refused to reopen the case without giving a clear reason. It wasn't until Mueller jumped to the top of his appeal, accusing the Cook County prosecutor of violating the U.S. Constitution, that the county prosecutor took it seriously and finally decided to acquit Harris.
Harris walked out of prison on the 19th.
The incident involved in a June 2011 incident at a gas station in Chicago, where Harris was accused of shooting and killing the victim, Rundell Moore, and attempting to kill Quincy Wallard, a mechanical engineer who attempted to refuel. In the weeks following the shooting, a group of suspects were arrested and had them stand in a row for identification.
A "witness" testified that he saw Harris shoot at a gas station, which is the core "evidence" of the Cook County prosecutor's prosecution against Harris. However, it was only years later that the lawyer Mueller learned a clue by chance and discovered that the witness was actually a blind man.
Since the beginning of this year, Cook County has corrected a large number of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases in previous years, and acquitted 19 people, many of whom have been unjustly imprisoned for more than 25 years. Just this month, two cousins, James Soto and David Ayala, were cleared of their grievances after being wrongfully accused of being wrongfully imprisoned for two Chicago teenagers in 1981.
The unjust, false and wrongful convictions from years ago largely came from the Cook County Office of Conviction Integrity, which was widely criticized and renamed the Office of Conviction Review this month. Illinois Attorney Fox said the division's "rebranding represents a fundamental attitudinal shift in our ability to right past wrongs, ensure justice system fairness, and incorporate community voices into our approach to decision-making." The Cook County Attorney's Office said, "We will continue to uphold the health and safety of our community."
On the evening of the 19th, Harris, who walked out of the prison gate, said excitedly, "After 12 years, I finally managed to survive, although I lost many of the best times of my life in prison, but from now on, my life will enter a better stage." Harris's mother, Shakona, said that her hanging heart had finally landed, and that her son's return still felt "as unreal as a dream".
Red Star News reporter Zheng Zhi.
Editor: He Xianxian, Editor-in-charge: Wei Kongming.
*Red Star News, Prizes for Reporting!）