2023-10-26 00:32:58
Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart were 16 years old when they were arrested on Thanksgiving Day 1983. They were charged with the crime of 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett. They were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. They spent 36 years in prison. Today they are free because their innocence was proven and the city of Baltimore, in the state of Maryland, has just announced that it agreed to pay them US$48 million in compensation. This is the story.
One afternoon in November 1983, Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins, and Andrew Stewart skipped school to visit their old high school, Harlem Park Junior High School. But after walking through the hallways and seeing former teachers, they were kicked out by a security guard.
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About 30 minutes later, DeWitt Duckett was shot in the neck and died at Harlem Park Junior High School. Whoever shot him also took his jacket, according to police.
According to Washington Postwitnesses told police they had seen Michael Willis, 18, run out of the school and throw away a gun, and that he was wearing a Georgetown jacket that night.
But far from following that lead, lead homicide detective Donald Kincaid focused on friends Chestnut, Watkins and Stewart because several people had seen them at school.
Additionally, when police searched Chestnut’s home at 1 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day, they found a Georgetown jacket.
But witnesses failed to identify Chestnut, Watkins and Stewart in photos officers showed them, according to police records cited by the Washington Post.
Tried as adults
“The case attracted intense publicity in 1983, as one of the first involving the violent theft of sports equipment. Baltimore prosecutors, led by then-Assistant State Attorney Jonathan Shoup, chose to try the minors as adults,” reports the Washington Post.
During the trial, prosecutor Shoup told defense attorneys that there was no evidence to exonerate the teens, despite reports showing that witnesses had not identified them and that Willis had been named as the suspect.
It was later learned that several witnesses told investigators that Detective Kincaid and other investigators coerced them into making statements falsely accusing the “Harlem Park Three,” who were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. By then they were already 17 years old.
The Washington Post noted that all appeals failed, so Watkins and Stewart said they had resigned themselves to life behind bars. But Chestnut did not give up and continued to push for a review of the case.
The three friends after being released. (JERRY JACKSON / AP).
evidence was hidden
In accordance with CNN, Chestnut submitted a public records request to Maryland’s attorney general. Thanks to that request he discovered that there was new evidence that was hidden from his lawyers during the trial. So he contacted Baltimore’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which was reviewing old convictions.
Investigators “ignored eyewitness evidence and physical evidence that contradicted the chosen narrative, including evidence that pointed to a different suspect. Instead, they shaped the evidence to implicate the plaintiffs, including forcing young witnesses to testify to falsehoods,” according to the lawsuit filed in 2020.
“It made me angry,” Chestnut said in an interview in 2019. “Just the fact that everything was hidden for all those years. “I knew they didn’t want to reveal those things.”
CNN detailed that the lawsuit said that a “John Doe” was the one who actually killed DeWitt and fled the school with his jacket. By the time the case of the condemned was reviewed, he had already died.
“On November 25, 2019, three days before Thanksgiving, a judge granted the writ of actual innocence (filed jointly by plaintiffs and the state of Maryland) and ordered his immediate release,” the lawsuit says.
State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said at the time that there was “intentional concealment and misrepresentation of exculpatory evidence, evidence that would have shown that this was someone else.”
He apologized to the three convicts when they were released and promised to work for reforms for people wrongfully sentenced, according to CNN.
On November 25, 2019, the three men left the Baltimore City Courthouse toward North Calvert Street and headed to meet their loved ones, the Washington Post recalled.
Almost 15 million dollars for each one
On Wednesday of last week, the Baltimore Board of Estimates approved the lawsuit settlement by 5 votes to zero.
The men will each receive $14.9 million and the law firm that represented them, Brown, Goldstein & Levy, will receive $3.3 million, according to legal documents.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in a public statement that settlements like this one seek to redress “serious injustices” against residents and maintained that the families involved deserve compensation.
“Our city is in a position where in 2023 we will literally be paying for the misconduct of (Baltimore Police Department) officers from decades ago,” Scott said. “This is just part of the price our city must pay to right the wrongs of this terrible history.”
In 2020, the three men sued the Baltimore Police Department, Kincaid and Bryn Joyce, another detective. Joyce said that year that he was “stunned” to learn of the exonerations and that “our goal when he was in the homicide unit was to find the truth, no matter where it took us.”
When the lawsuit was filed, Watkins said, “If you take three kids’ lives and destroy them, no one wants to talk about it… I’m fighting to get my life back.”
Prosecutor Shoup died in 2016 and suspect Willis was shot dead in West Baltimore in 2002, the Washington Post reported.
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