Here's another guy that pleaded guilty picastoc
US war veteran exonerated after 52 years as a murderer
By
ninemsn
May 04, 2016: Paul Gatling, 81, who served nine years in prison for a crime he did not commit, has finally been exonerated of a 1963 murder conviction.
FTBA
An octogenarian in the US who has been exonerated for a murder he did not commit 52 years after the conviction may finally have his chance to vote in a federal election.
Paul Gatling, 81, was jailed for the 1963 murder of Lawrence Rothbort, a sculptor who was coldly murdered in his New York home as the civil rights movement reached critical mass in the States.
Mr Gatling, a decorated Korean war veteran, was pressured into copping a plea deal in a bid to avoid the death penalty for the crime, for which he served nine years.
He was put away in no small part on the evidence of Rothbort's widow, whose claim that a "negro" with a shotgun killed her husband was hokey to say the least, as the
New York Daily News reports.
"Her dialogue was of a bad B-movie," Mark Hale, the head of the Conviction Review Unit, told the Brooklyn Supreme Court earlier this week.
"Mrs Rothbort may have been involved in the murder."
Ready to be counted...Mr Gatling says a lot of water has gone under the bridge. (AAP)
The other witness that sealed Mr Gatling's fate was described as having a "chequered past".
"In 1964, an African-American accused of killing a Caucasian in front of his family with a blue-ribbon jury, this case was hopeless," Mr Hale told the court, echoing the sentiments of District Attorney Ken Thompson.
"Gatling repeatedly proclaimed his innocence even as he faced the death penalty back in the '60s. He was pressured to plead guilty and, sadly, did not receive a fair trial," Mr Thompson said.
Mr Gatling was released from prison in 1974, but the conviction itself was not overturned.
As a felon he was prohibited from voting in America which was a deprivation that tormented him.
"I'm filled up with gratitude. I hope you print my story accurately because too many inaccuracies have gone by," Mr Gatling said outside the court. (AAP)
“To say that I’m glad all of this is over, is not enough," Mr Gatling, who now lives in Virginia, said.
"The thing I have to do as a citizen is to honour what the district attorney has done... I was living a life that wasn’t a life, I couldn’t vote," he said.
"There's a lot of water gone under the bridge but the bridge is still standing. That bridge is a bridge to life for me," an emotional Mr Gatling told the court.
"Because I was living a life that wasn't a life."
© ninemsn 2016
Read more at
http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/...er-51-years-as-a-murderer#lHZcehm0CCccdcF5.99
