A 61-year-old New York man has been exonerated and released after serving 19 years in prison for a roughly $550 robbery that prosecutors now say he did not commit.
Kenneth Windley walked out of a Brooklyn courthouse on Monday after a judge threw out his 2007 robbery conviction and dismissed the case at the joint request of prosecutors and his lawyers.
Prosecutors told the court they now agree he was not involved in the 2005 robbery that sent him to prison. Windley said the ruling "corrected" what had cost him nearly two decades of his life, according to ABC News.
The Brooklyn district attorney's office said a new review of the case found evidence backing Windley's long-standing claim of innocence.
That evidence included sworn statements and interviews in which two other men admitted they robbed 70-year-old Gerald Ross and said Windley was not involved. Officials described the men's accounts as compelling and noted both are already serving time for similar robberies targeting older bank customers in Brooklyn.
Windley was arrested after he used a $542.77 money order to buy a stove for his mother, not knowing it had been stolen from Ross during the robbery, according to prosecutors, NBC News reported.
He said acquaintances sold him the money order at a discount and assured him it was legitimate. Ross later identified Windley in a police lineup, and a jury convicted him of second-degree robbery; because of prior felonies, he was sentenced to 20 years to life.
The district attorney's office said the later-confessed robbers' statements were supported by prison phone recordings and emails. After reviewing the new material, prosecutors joined the defense in asking the court to vacate the conviction.
Windley, who first entered prison on the case in 2007, is now fully cleared of the robbery, though any civil action over his wrongful conviction has not yet been announced, as per the San Francisco Gate.
