Tomas Haldane walked down the steps of the Supreme Court building in Riverton on Tuesday a free man, 30 years after he was convicted of a robbery and killing he has always said he did not commit.
A panel of three judges overturned the 56-year-old’s conviction after new DNA tests on evidence from the original case did not match him and instead pointed to another man, who died in prison several years ago while serving a sentence for a separate crime.
A case built on one witness
Haldane was 26 when he was arrested for a robbery at a Northvale jewelry shop in which the owner was killed. There were no fingerprints linking him to the scene, and the case against him rested largely on a single eyewitness who picked him out of a lineup.
His lawyers have argued for years that the identification was unreliable. The breakthrough came two years ago, when a legal aid group that reviews possible wrongful convictions asked for a glove found near the shop to be tested with modern DNA methods.
The science that set Tomas free did not exist when he was convicted. The doubt about his guilt always did.
Irena Volkov, Haldane’s lawyer
“I never stopped saying the truth”
Smiling and wearing a suit borrowed from his brother, Haldane thanked his family and lawyers, and said he wanted to spend his first evening eating dinner by the sea in Port Alden.
Comments 2
Thirty years. I cannot imagine. I hope the compensation is fast and generous.
That legal aid group deserves public funding. How many other cases are out there?