Miguel Solorio, a 44-year-old man has been released after spending 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
The California man was wrongly convicted of a drive-by killing of an 82-year-old woman in 1998.
Miguel Solorio, 44, was arrested in 1998 for a fatal drive-by shooting in Whittier, south east of Los Angeles, and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Solorio maintained his innocence, arguing he had been with his girlfriend and sister the day Maryann Bramlett was shot and killed.
And with new evidence and witnesses supporting Solorio’s testimony, his ‘dream team’ lawyers were able to successfully argue that his brother was the gunman.
The attorneys who petitioned for Mr Solorio’s release argued that his conviction was based on faulty eyewitness identification practices.
In a long-awaited reversal, Superior Judge William Ryan overturned the conviction during an LA hearing that Mr Solorio attended remotely on Thursday.
‘This nightmare started when I was 19 years old. I’m now 44. This was going to be my Christmas in prison. Being home this year will be the best present ever,’ Solorio said in a statement provided by the Northern California Innocence Project.
In a long-awaited reversal, Superior Judge William Ryan overturned the conviction during an LA hearing that Mr Solorio attended remotely on Thursday.
‘This nightmare started when I was 19 years old. I’m now 44. This was going to be my Christmas in prison. Being home this year will be the best present ever,’ Solorio said in a statement provided by the Northern California Innocence Project.
‘It’s like a dream I don’t want to wake up from,’ said Mr Solorio in a statement after the decision. ‘This day finally came.’
On Thursday, after the ruling, the DA’s office apologized to Mr Solorio and his wife.
‘We thank the hard working Deputy District Attorneys and Investigators in our Habeas and Conviction Integrity Units for their hard work and offer our sincere apology to Mr. Solorio and his wife for all they have suffered for over 20 years,’ the statement read.
‘We will continue to strive to learn from the wrongful convictions to prevent them from occurring in the future.’
