Jonathan Fleming was exonerated on April 8th after spending nearly 25 years in prison for a 1989 murder in Brooklyn, New York that he did not commit. Fleming, 51, was released after new evidence was discovered in his case, including a phone bill receipt that confirmed he was in Orlando, Florida on a family trip to Walt Disney World less than five hours before the killing occurred in Brooklyn. Fleming’s wrongful conviction was the result of eyewitness misidentification and the fact that a crucial piece of evidence proving Fleming’s innocence—the phone bill receipt—was not a part of original trial evidence. Taylor Koss, one of Fleming’s lawyers, said that Fleming had questioned about the receipt at the trial, and when a detective at the trial was asked about the receipt, the detective said that he did not recall recovering it. However, investigators uncovered the phone bill receipt in Fleming’s case file last year.
Fleming’s case is one of numerous wrongful conviction cases that Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth P. Thompson inherited when he was sworn into office this year. Brooklyn’s Conviction Integrity Unit, created by Thompson’s predecessor, Charles J. Hynes, has allowed wrongful conviction cases such as Fleming’s to be reviewed in order to correct mistakes in justice and protect the innocent.
Read the full story here.
Read about two other men who were exonerated through Brooklyn’s Conviction Integrity Unit here.