A Washington D.C. Superior Court judge has officially exonerated Cleveland Wright, 56, who spent 28 years behind bars for a wrongful murder conviction before he was released from prison in 2007. Judge Laura A. Cordero declared Wright innocent of the 1978 murder of William Horn ruling that the only evidence at Wright’s trial directly linking him to the crime came from two witnesses whose testimony has become unreliable. Wright is the fifth D.C. man to be cleared of a conviction tied to flawed FBI forensic testimony since 2009.
Judge Cordero wrote in a 14-page opinion, “The Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Wright did not commit the crimes of first-degree murder while armed, first-degree felony murder, and armed robbery of Mr. Horn, of which he was convicted in this case.”
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