Story out of Brooklyn, New York:
When police officers came upon the body of Neda Mae Carter in a park in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, 25 years ago, her face and neck were battered, her arms splayed and her legs straight, in the pose of a crucifixion.
A man named Andre Hatchett would be convicted of second-degree murder, based on the testimony of a man who claimed to have witnessed the killing.
On Thursday afternoon, prosecutors in State Supreme Court admitted what Mr. Hatchett had maintained since his arrest: that he had not killed Ms. Carter.
When the killing occurred, on Feb. 18, 1991, Mr. Hatchett was 24 and hobbling on crutches after being hit with bullets in the throat and leg as a bystander in a shooting the previous year. He had an I.Q. of 63, with the reading and writing ability of a first grader, according to lawyers from the Innocence Project.
Mr. Hatchett and Ms. Carter had seen each other earlier on the evening of the murder, in a rooming house where his aunt lived alongside Ms. Carter and her mother. Mr. Hatchett gave Ms. Carter money to buy crack, his lawyers said in an interview. She left around 9:30 p.m. and never returned.
Though he cooperated with the police and provided an alibi, Mr. Hatchett was arrested and convicted almost entirely on the testimony of a career criminal named Gerard Williams, who said that he had seen, from 30 to 40 feet away, Mr. Hatchett striking a body on the ground in the park that night. Cont.
Story from - New York Times
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