2023-07-07 13:36:35
A Maryland board on Wednesday approved $2.9 million in compensation for a man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 32 years, including a decade on death row, for two murders he did not commit.
John Huffington was pardoned by former Governor Larry Hogan in January. The former governor cited prosecutorial misconduct in granting Huffington a full pardon of innocence in connection with a 1981 double murder in Harford County.
On Wednesday, the Board of Public Works, made up of Gov. Wes Moore, Comptroller Brooke Lierman and Treasurer Dereck Davis, approved the compensation package.
“Time spent away from family and loved ones was stolen from him, vacations, birthdays, missed milestones, denied opportunities – injustice, over and over again,” Moore said in apologizing to Huffington, who attended the board meeting.
Moore highlighted the work Huffington has done to raise awareness about failings in the criminal justice system, through speeches and a book about his experiences.
“John has become a friend,” Moore said. “I am grateful not only that he is willing to share his story, but that he has been willing to take his pain and turn it into service.”
The governor also noted that since his release, Huffington has worked as a manager at Second Chance, a nonprofit organization that helps people with job barriers. He also worked in job training and reinsertion programs at the Aulas Vivas Foundation. He is now the COO of the Kinetic Capital Community Foundation, which works to promote income equality in Baltimore.
Huffington always maintained his innocence. He was released from the Patuxent Institution in 2013 after serving 32 years of two life sentences.
He was twice convicted of the murders known as the “Memorial Day Murders.” Diane Becker was stabbed to death in her RV while her 4-year-old son inside was not injured. Joseph Hudson, Becker’s boyfriend, was fatally shot and found a few miles (kilometers) away. A second suspect in the murders testified against Huffington, was convicted of first-degree murder and served 27 years.
Prosecutors relied on later discredited testimony about hair found at the crime scene that matched Huffington’s.
He appealed his first conviction in 1981. In 1983, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death.
Prosecutors later commuted that sentence to two life sentences.
Questions about the evidence in the case arose when The Washington Post uncovered an FBI report in 2011 that found that the FBI agent who analyzed the hair evidence in the Huffington case may not have used reliable science, or even tested the hair at all.
The report had been written in 1999, but Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly chose not to provide it to Huffington’s lawyers.
A Frederick County judge vacated Huffington’s convictions and ordered a new trial in 2013 after Huffington presented new evidence using DNA evidence that was not available during his previous trials. When the hair evidence was analyzed for DNA more than 30 years later, the results showed that it was not Huffington’s hair.
The Maryland supreme court voted unanimously to disbar Cassilly in 2021. The court found that he concealed exculpatory evidence in the 1981 double murder and lied about it in subsequent years. Cassilly had retired in 2019. Cassilly maintained that she did nothing wrong.
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