A man who spent his remaining teenage years and the entirety of his twenties in prison for a crime he did not commit has been exonerated after the key witness was found legally blind.
Darien Harris was only 17 years old when he was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Rondell Moore at a gas station in 2011. He was sentenced to 76 years in prison just weeks before he was supposed to graduate high school.
On Tuesday evening, Mr Harris was finally able to walk out of the Clark County Jail in Chicago and celebrate with his family.
"I finally made it. 12 and a half years, I made it," he told local reporters.
Mr Harris was convicted revolved around one key witness who had identified him, a high school senior with no criminal record, as the shooter.
Mr Harris insisted that he was home watching a basketball game when the shooting occurred, according to NBC.
Harris was happy he could spend the rest of his life outside of a jail cell— (Fox 32)
In his quest to prove his innocence from behind bars with help from a fellow inmate, Mr Harris discovered that the witness who identified him in the shooting was legally blind.
"I didn’t understand it at first. And that’s when I dug deeper and found out that he was legally blind, and I brought it to my lawyers," Mr Harris told ABC7.
His attorney, Lauren Myerscough-Mueller, said that the witness lied about the quality of his eyesight at trial and also claimed that police at the time intimidated another witness in the case to identify Mr Harris as the gunman, but later recanted at trial, saying he never saw Mr Harris.
"All of these things came together," the attorney told NBC.
"There were never any forensics tying Darien to the case; he never confessed. There was never any reliable evidence against him, to begin with. And unfortunately, it took 12 years for all that to come to pass and for that to be recognised."
A Cook County judge assessed these findings and exonerated Mr Harris back in July but kept him locked up as prosecutors were planning to re-try him.
After an extra five months of waiting, the prosecutors abandoned their case, and Mr Harris walked free, now aged 30.
A week before, CBS talked to Harris from jail about his exoneration— (CBS News)
"Why did it take so long? Why did we have tonight so hard? Sometimes when the evidence is that blatant, just let them go," Mr Harris said to the outlet.
Despite the injustice that took away much of Mr Harris’ formative years, he remained positive as he left the jail, excited for the rest of his life.
"I missed some of my best years, but man, I’m [gonna] live some good years now," he said.
His fellow inmate, Jimmy Soto, who was serving time on a wrongful conviction for around 42 years, was also released from prison last week.
He returned to the jail to greet Mr Harris and welcome him to the outside world.
While Mr Harris was in jail, he spent time getting an education in business and now hopes to pursue a law degree to help others who have been wrongfully convicted clear their names.
