Antonio Yarbough and Sharrif Wilson of Brooklyn, New York, were exonerated Thursday after spending more than 21 years behind bars for three murders they did not commit. In 1992, Yarbough’s mother, sister, and another girl were stabbed and strangled to death when Yarbough was 18 and Wilson, a juvenile, was 15. Based on Wilson’s false confession, both Yarbough and Wilson were convicted in separate trials—Yarbough was sentenced to 75 years to life and Wilson was sentenced to nine years to life.
However, last year, testing revealed that DNA under Yarbough’s mother’s fingernails matched the DNA found on another murder victim in 1999—when Yarbough and Wilson were behind bars. According to Assistant District Attorney Mark Hale, the newly discovered evidence created “substantial reasonable doubt of the defendants’ guilt.” Both men had their convictions overturned.
New Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth P. Thompson is currently facing a predicament in which mistakes and misconduct by police and prosecutors in the 1980s and 1990s put many innocent people behind bars. Thompson is planning on adding more prosecutors, paralegals, and investigators to the Brooklyn Conviction Integrity Unit.
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See what NCIP has done to prevent false confessions of juveniles in California: