Maurice Hastings from California served 38 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. He was paid the largest compensation in the history of the state for an erroneous sentence — $ 25 million, according to The Guardian portal.
In 1983, a man was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, he was found guilty of the rape and murder of Roberta Widermeyer.
The prisoner twice requested DNA examination of evidence, in 2000 the prosecutor's office rejected his request. It was only in 2021 that he managed to achieve an examination, the results of which proved the absence of genetic material belonging to him in sperm samples.
At the same time, the DNA matched the biomaterial of a man who was detained three weeks after the murder of Widermeier, but he was not considered the main suspect, despite the fact that he was found to have things belonging to the murdered woman. In 2020, he died in prison while serving a sentence on another charge.
In 2023, Hastings was officially found not guilty. The court found that Inglewood police officers and an investigator from the Los Angeles Prosecutor's Office fabricated evidence about his involvement in the murder.
Now a 72-year-old man lives in California and actively participates in church life.
The settlement agreement to find Hastings not guilty was reached after decades of litigation in which he tried to prove that his sentence was erroneous.
"No amount of money can give me back the 38 years of my life that were stolen from me. But this agreement is a long—awaited completion of a very long journey, and I look forward to moving on with my life," Hastings concluded.