An innocent man, who spent 38 years behind bars in California, received $ 25 million in what his lawyers called the greatest compensation for unfairly in the history of the state, writes AP.
Maurice Hastings, 70 years old, spent 38 years in photo prison: X
The agreement was concluded in August, according to the judicial documents made public on Monday.
Maurice Hastings, 72, was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of conditional release in relation to sexual aggression and the 1983 killing of Roberta Wydermyer, who was killed with a single bullet in the head, writes Mediafax.
The trial accused two officers of the Inglewood Police Department and the investigator of the Los Angeles district prosecutor from that time for setting up Hastings.
“No amount of money could return my 38 years of my life to be stolen,” Hastings said in a statement. “But this understanding is a welcome end of a very long road and I look forward to continuing my life. “
The defendants' lawyers and a spokesman for the city of Inglewood did not respond to the comment requests sent by e-mail on Tuesday. Other details of the agreement were not made public.
The agreement comes after decades of legal battles in which Hastings supported his innocence
At the time of the victim's autopsy, the forensic doctor performed an examination for sexual aggression and collected the author's bodily fluids, according to the district prosecutor's office.
Hastings requested the DNA testing of the respective evidence in 2000, but at that time, the prosecutor's office rejected the request. Hastings filed a request for innocence at the Prosecutor's Office's integrity unit in 2021, and DNA testing showed that the sperm was not his. In 2022, at the age of 69, Hastings' conviction was canceled at the request of prosecutors and lawyers.
The DNA profile was introduced into a state database and was identified as belonging to a person convicted for another armed kidnapping and forced copulation with a female victim who was placed in the trunk of a vehicle, a very resembling details that look a lot with the killing of Wydermyer.
