Keith Bush, the man who spent 33 years in prison … but was innocent

Keith Bush is in the news these days because he was released after 33 years in prison … but he was innocent!

The story goes back to the time when this African American was 17 years old. Then he was accused of murdering a teenager in New York.

As a result, he states to have signed confessions as the perpetrator of the crime that he has never read.

The newspaper The New York Times He gave details of an incredible case.

Deaf ears
"For four decades, Keith Bush has insisted that he was sentenced in his teenage years for a murder that he had not committed: the strangulation of a young man. 14-year-old girl in Bellport, NY He claimed that the police had beaten him and forced him to sign an admission that he had never read.

In jail, she sought the help of a lawyer from the law faculty of Pace University Law School, who sued for records and found evidence that Bush was not going to get a case. had not benefited from a fair trial. Even after being released from the state prison on parole, Bush continued to fight to dump his name, "the article said.

On May 22, Bush was exonerated in the Suffolk County District Court in Riverhead, Long Island.

Suffolk County General Counsel, Timothy D. Sini, asked a judge to overturn the conviction, saying prosecutors had never told defense lawyers that police had questioned another possible culprit.

"I can not give you back what they took you back in the seventies, but what I can restore to you today is your presumption of innocence," Judge Anthony Senft Jr. told Bush.

Bush, now 62, said he was moved by the decision. He noted that during his years in prison, he had never been heard.

L & # 39; s history
In 1975, Bush was only 17 when he was accused of murdering Sherese Watson, a teenager who never returned home after a party at a home in Bellport, New York. a vacant lot, strangled, and with signs of badual abuse, Bush was arrested four days later and signed a confession of the crime, "said the New Yorker mentioned above.

During the trial, the jury believed the confessions, although Bush insisted from the beginning to force them. One of the girls who claimed to have attended the party and saw Bush leave with the victim that night retracted at a hearing five years later; he revealed that he was not even present at the party. However, this did not lead to a new trial.

Alternative
In 2006, Bush wrote to Adele Bernhard, who was at the time a lawyer in charge of a legal clinic at Pace University Law School, of the Green Haven Correctional Facility, in the north of the state of New York.

He was innocent, he told him, and he hoped that she could help prove it. He had already written similar letters to other lawyers.

Bernhard is immediately interested in her case, she said, after reading the statement that he had signed.

The lawyer began to move and investigate and discovered that the DNA under the victim's fingernails did not match the sample provided by Bush in jail.

He also returned to question the witness who had given up his testimony of having seen Bush leave with Watson of the party.

However, in 2008, a judge dismissed Bernhard's motion to quash the conviction and denied his request for additional evidence in the clothing and other evidence found at the scene of the crime.

Bernhard did not give up. Over the next decade, he again met with key witnesses, badyzed fiber optic tests, examined the confessions closely and thoroughly investigated the detectives involved.

In addition, he brought a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the records of the case.

These records contained evidence that the police had another suspect in Watson's murder: another boy at the party, John W. Jones Junior.

In a statement, Jones, who has since died, told police that he had stumbled on Watson's body after leaving the party intoxicated, Sini said.

He also stated that the comb found next to the body resembled the one that fell on him.

At the 1976 trial, Bush's attorney never heard of Jones' statements, a flagrant violation of the rules of procedure and evidence.

"We do not believe that Bush committed this murder, we believe that Bush did not have access to a fair trial, and we believe that John Jones is a more likely suspect in this crime," said prosecutor Timothy Sini, who asked a judge to annul the conviction, stating that the prosecutors had never told the defense that he had questioned another possible perpetrator. .

"We do not believe that Bush committed this murder, we believe that Bush did not have access to a fair trial, and we think John Jones is a more likely suspect in this crime," Sini said.

Conditional liberty
Bush was released on parole in 2007, nearly a month before his fiftieth birthday, and had to register as a bad offender, he said.

In 2013, he spent another year in prison for violating probation because he was using a computer with Internet access. He got a job in Connecticut as a forklift operator and is now committed to getting married.