A prison system official says a New York City man is free after spending nearly two decades behind bars for murder before a judge declared him innocent.
Fernando Bermudez was released from the Sing Sing prison in Ossining at about 2:10 p.m. Friday. A Manhattan judge overturned Bermudez's 1992 conviction last week, saying it stemmed from unreliable witness testimony.
But Bermudez remained behind bars because he hadn't served a 27-month sentence in a federal drug case.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered that Bermudez be released at least until June 30 while his lawyers ask federal officials to credit his drug sentence as served.
Now believe me when I say that I feel bad for the fact that this man has had to stay in jail for so long and for a crime that he didn't commit.
ReplyDeleteBut on the other hand this man while innocent of the charges brought against him is no saint. Apparently he was in trouble for a drug related case at the federal level as well.
I'd like to know a little bit more about this and whether this contributed to the way the prosecution treated him during the original trial.
Could it be that because of the drug charge pending against him that they just figured that he was obviously guilty of the other crime while not having credible information against him?
And add to this the job of his attorney at the time. Was his jail sentence due to the fact that his attorney or public defender not doing an adequate enough job to shoot holes into the prosecutions case?
I mean come on. If there was nothing other than a persons testimony a skilled defense attorney should have been able to discredit the testimony which we are now saying was unreliable and recanted.
It just seems that we see way to many of these cases. I think the states should be held accountable and liable especially when a persons life hangs in the balance. I hope he sues and wins big.