Defense attorneys had asked for evidence that might exonerate their clients, but prosecutors had said they had none. Witnesses identified a different young person as the shooter, but police instead focused on Chestnut, Watkins and Stewart.
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Investigators reinterviewed witnesses and looked anew at the evidence, and Mosby's office says the findings were troubling: Witnesses were coached and coerced by investigators to say they'd seen the three, after twice failing to pick them out of a lineup. In May, Chestnut had written a letter to Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, along with evidence incriminating the man now believed to have been the actual shooter, and asked for her office's Conviction Integrity Unit to reexamine the case as a wrongful conviction. People in the courtroom erupted in applause as he declared them innocent, The Washington Post reports. "On behalf of the criminal justice system, and I'm sure this means very little to you, I'm going to apologize," Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Charles Peters said. The three, now in their 50s, were all released from prison on Monday - fully exonerated after spending 36 years incarcerated for a murder they didn't commit. Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Three 16-year-old boys were arrested on Thanksgiving Day 1983 and charged with the murder. In November 1983, 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett was shot in the neck in a Baltimore high school over his Georgetown Starter jacket.
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Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images Andrew Stewart (center) walks with his mother and sister on Monday after he and two other black men were exonerated in a 1983 murder for which they were sentenced to life in prison.