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Darrell Jones was found not guilty of murder today. Mr. Jones was being retried after serving 32 years in prison. A judge threw out his conviction in 2017, finding the police had doctored a key piece of evidence & a detective lied at his first trial. wbur.fm/2KdY1HN
Mr. Jones was just 18 when he went to prison and has maintained his innocence from the beginning. He rejected a plea deal offered during his first trial that would have meant he served just 6 years in prison. The case against him was based solely on eyewitness testimony.
The prosecution, knowing the judge's ruling about the doctored police evidence, the detective's perjury (and an additional ruling about racial bias of his first jury) as well as the fact he served 32 years in prison, still went ahead and retried him.
This jury acquitted him in just 2 hours, of which Mr Jones said, "I'm celebrating the fact that I'm free. But I don't celebrate that they set me free because they shouldn't have had me anyway."
