clemente javier aguirre on monday became the 21st person exonerated by dna evidence after being sentenced to death. in 2006 he was unjustly convicted of a double murder in florida.
aguirre, 38, received incompetent legal representation at his trial - his lawyer failed to hire forensic experts or demand a single dna test on the vast amount of physical evidence collected from the crime scene.
when dna testing was conducted years later, results excluded aguirre and repeatedly pointed to the victims' relative. based on this new evidence, the 2016 florida supreme court unanimously overturned his wrongful conviction. nonetheless, prosecutors sought to retry him again: with the death penalty.
eventually prosecutors agreed to drop all criminal charges against aguirre. he was surrounded by his family and supporters at the exoneration, and was released from custody later in the day. aguirre spent 14 years in prison. he was legally assisted by the innocent project.
the innocence project was founded in 1992 to exonerate the wrongly convicted through dna testing and criminal justice reform. their mission is to free the staggering number of innocent people who remain incarcerated, and help reform the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment.
i am
- mark j. tuggle
- harlem, usa
- same-gender-loving contemporary descendant of enslaved africans. community activist, feminist, health educator, independent filmmaker, mentor, playwright, poet & spiritual being. featured at, in & on africana.com, afrikan poetry theatre, angel herald, bejata dot com, bet tonight with tavis smiley, blacklight online, black noir, brooklyn moon cafe, gmhc's barbershop, klmo-fm, lgbt community services center, longmoor productions, nuyorican poets cafe, our corner, poz, pulse, rolling out new york, rush arts gallery, saint veronica's church, schomburg center for research in black culture, sexplorations, the citizen, the new york times, the soundz bar, the trenton times, the village voice, upn news, uzuri, venus, vibe, wbai-fm, wnyc-fm & wqht-fm. volunteered with adodi, bailey house, inc., black men's xchange-new york, colorofchange.org, drug policy alliance, east harlem tutorial program, imagenation film & music festival, presente.org, save darfur coalition, the enough project, the osborne association, the sledge group & your black world. worked on films with maurice jamal & heather murphy. writing student of phil bertelsen & ed bullins. mjt975@msn.com.
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