{"id":23872,"date":"2022-10-29T15:47:47","date_gmt":"2022-10-29T19:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=23872"},"modified":"2022-10-29T15:47:47","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T19:47:47","slug":"maurice-hastings-us-man-in-prison-for-38-years-freed-by-new-dna-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2022\/10\/29\/maurice-hastings-us-man-in-prison-for-38-years-freed-by-new-dna-evidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Maurice Hastings: US man in prison for 38 years freed by new DNA evidence"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

A US man who spent nearly four decades in prison for murder has been released after new DNA evidence pointed to a different person.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Maurice Hastings served more than 38 years in state prison for the 1983 murder of Roberta Wydermyer in California and two attempted murders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

But new DNA evidence instead pointed to another man who died in prison in 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Now 69, Mr Hastings has been released from prison after his 1988 conviction was vacated on 20 October.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

LA County District Attorney George Gasc\u00f3n described his conviction as a “terrible injustice”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

“The justice system is not perfect, and when we learn of new evidence which causes us to lose confidence in a conviction, it is our obligation to act swiftly,” he added in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Roberta Wydermyer was found in the boot of her car with a single gunshot wound to the head in 1983. She had earlier been sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Mr Hastings was subsequently charged with murder and prosecutors sought the death penalty.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

After a hung jury, a second jury convicted him and he was sentenced in 1988 to life in state prison without the possibility of parole.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

At the time of the victim’s autopsy, semen was detected in an oral swab. Mr Hastings had maintained his innocence from the moment he was arrested, but a request for DNA testing of the swab in 2000 was denied by the district attorney.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Eventually he was able to put in a claim of innocence to the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit in 2021 and DNA testing in June found that the semen was not his.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

The DNA profile instead matched a man who had been convicted of an armed kidnapping where he placed his female victim in a trunk of a vehicle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Following a court hearing on 20 October to vacate his conviction, Mr Hastings told reporters he wasn’t bitter and wanted to enjoy the rest of his life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

“I prayed for many years that this day would come,” the Associated Press quoted Mr Hastings as saying. “I am not pointing fingers; I am not standing up here a bitter man, but I just want to enjoy my life now while I have it.”<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A US man who spent nearly four decades in prison for murder has been released after new DNA evidence pointed to a different person. Maurice Hastings served more than 38 years in state prison for […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[177,8892,1397,1695],"class_list":{"0":"post-23872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-conviction-integrity-unit","11":"tag-dna","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23872"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23875,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23872\/revisions\/23875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}