Posted: Nov 13, 2021 22:50 GMT
Dontae Sharpe was sentenced in 1995 to life in prison at the age of 19 for first degree murder. The ruling was based in part on the testimony of a teenage girl who later retracted.
A man from North Carolina (USA) who spent 26 years in prison for a murder he did not commit he has been pardoned by the state governor.
Dontae Sharpe was sentenced to life in prison for first degree murder. In 2019, after having been able to prove his always proclaimed innocence, he was released and after this final acquittal, he will be able to request a compensation up to $ 750,000 for his wrongful conviction.
The governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper, in a statement this Friday granted him a full pardon, definitively rehabilitating his name. “Mr. Sharpe and others who have been unjustly convicted deserve that this injustice be fully and publicly recognized,” he said.
“My freedom remains incomplete as long as there are still people who go to jail unjustly, if there are still people in jail unfairly and there are still people who are waiting for pardons,” said Sharpe, who branded the country’s penal system “corrupt” and said he will continue to fight for other inmates to receive justice.
Sharpe’s case
Dontae Sharpe was sentenced in 1995 to life in prison at the age of 19 for the shooting murder of 33-year-old George Radcliffe.
The indictment was based in part on the testimony of a 15-year-old teenager who claimed to have seen Sharpe commit the crime, but later said she had not been present at the time of the shooting. Some time after the trial, the young woman declared that her claims were fabricated and retracted her testimony.
For his part, Sharper always maintained that he was innocent. During your incarceration, repeatedly refused to plead guilty in exchange for a reduction of sentence.
Only two decades later, the Justice admitted that a mistake had been made after in 2019 a forensic doctor declared that the theory about how it was produced the shooting was medically and scientifically impossible. Based on this testimony, Sharper was able to be exonerated and released from jail.
The case became the subject of a television documentary, ‘Final Appeal’, chronicling Radcliff’s murder in February 1994 in the city of Greenville, Sharpe’s arrest, and his subsequent trial and conviction.
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