Man released after 19 years in prison for robbery he didn’t commit

Court

A man who spent nearly two decades in prison for a roughly $550 robbery was exonerated and freed on Monday, after prosecutors said they now agree he didn’t commit the crime, Associated Press reports.

“It cost me 20 years, but they said they corrected it now. So that’s all that matters. So I’m good with that,” Kenneth Windley, 61, was quoted as saying as he left a Brooklyn courthouse, at liberty for the first time since 2007.

The report published on Tuesday revealed that prosecutors said new evidence, including confessions from two other men who were convicted of similar robberies, supported his longstanding claim of innocence.

“This case is really a cautionary tale of how things can seem one way but, without careful analysis, not be what it purports to be,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, a Democrat, reportedly said after shaking Windley’s hand outside court.

“Had we known what the evidence was, this case should have never happened,” he added, noting that he had apologised privately to Windley.

AP reports that Windley was arrested in 2005 after buying a stove for his mother with a money order that turned out to be stolen, while Windley denied that he was involved in the robbery.

The money order had reportedly been snatched from a 70-year-old Gerald Ross by two thieves who followed him home from a trip to a bank and a post office.

According to NBC News, a review of the case that the prosecutor’s office released on Monday revealed that two men followed the old man into his apartment building and robbed him in the elevator, stealing $485 in cash and two blank, unsigned money orders — one for $542, the other for $9.

AP added that the thieves put Ross in a chokehold and took the money orders, cash, and a bank book from him.

“Ross regularly got money orders for his rent and life insurance payments at that post office, which helped him and the authorities follow a paper trail after the robbery.