The case against Kenneth Windley began with a simple act of devotion in buying a stove for his mother. But that 2005 purchase, made with a money order that unbeknownst to him was stolen, spiraled into almost two decades of wrongful imprisonment.
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Windley, a Black man, was exonerated and freed Monday (March 16) after prosecutors said they now agree he didn’t commit a robbery, according to ABC News.
The harrowing ordeal began in 2005, when two thieves followed Gerald Ross home from a trip to a bank in Brooklyn. The thieves put the 70-year-old in a chokehold and snatched money orders he would use to pay his rent, prosecutors said in a report released Monday, the Associated Press reported.
While the brutal nature of the robbery demanded justice, the rush to close the case overlooked a critical distinction between a man in possession of stolen property, and the suspects who actually used violence to obtain it.
Windley maintained that he was sold a $542.77 money order at a discount from a couple of acquaintances, who insisted that it was valid, but lied about how they obtained it. He used the money order to buy his mother a stove, and gave his name and driver’s license to the appliance store—which led authorities directly to him via paper trail.
Six weeks after the robbery, Ross identified Windley as one of the thieves. He was arrested in 2005, and testified at his trial about how his acquaintances approached him and sold him the stolen money order. However, a jury convicted him of second-degree robbery in March 2007. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison because of prior felony convictions.
From the start, Windley declared his innocence.
All of his appeals failed.
After a friend of Windley and a private investigator managed to sway the men to confess, the pair did just that. In a “compelling” admission, the pair confessed they robbed Ross together and that Windley was not involved in sworn statements and district attorney interviews.
A judge threw out Windley’s conviction and dismissed his case entirely. “It cost me 20 years, but they said they corrected it now. So that’s all that matters. So I’m good with that,” Windley, now 61, said as he left a Brooklyn courthouse for the first time since 2007.
The two men, referred to only as “Suspect 1” and “Suspect 2,” are both behind bars for other robbery convictions of the same nature, per ABC News. Those convictions all involved elderly male victims who were followed home from banks and check-cashing offices in Brooklyn in 2005 and 2006.
The legal timeframe for bringing new charges ran out years ago, and Ross has since died. Windley’s attorneys did not rule out the possibility of a civil lawsuit due to “process failures” in the original case.
“I’m just going to move on from there,” Windley said, News 12 Brooklyn reported. “A lot of things look different outside, but I’ll adapt.”
His first stop as a free man? Seafood.
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