Wrongfully Convicted Man Finally Receives Compensation—15 Years After His Release

Although Tyrone Jones has been a free man for the last 15 years, a technicality kept him from receiving the wrongful incarceration compensation he was entitled to, that is, until earlier in July when a judge officially declared Jones innocent of the 1998 murder of 16-year-old Tyree Wright in East Baltimore.

According to The Baltimore Banner, Jones, now a 48-year-old man, maintained his innocence from the very beginning. Initially, he told the police that he was playing pickup basketball at a nearby park before walking to a restaurant called CC’s at the time Wright was shot and killed.

After Jones was arrested and became the only suspect in the murder however, prosecutors claimed that Jones was guilty by proximity, saying that due to Maryland law, because he allegedly accompanied the actual shooter that he may as well have pulled the trigger himself.

Despite a lack of hard evidence connecting Jones to the murder of Wright, Circuit Judge John N. Prevas gave Jones a life sentence on the charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder; but said in court that he was open to new evidence should it be presented because he found the case “extremely vexatious.”

The judge’s feelings aside, Jones was still sent to prison for a crime he did not commit.

It was not until 2010 that the Baltimore State’s Attorney Office would argue that Jones was deserving of a new trial because of evidence it had concealed: a police report wherein the state’s star witness admitted that he did not actually see the shooting or who did it.

The Baltimore State’s Attorney Office eventually dropped the case later that year, making Jones a free man, but because the crime Jones was originally charged with was still considered a misdemeanor and not a felony in 2023, he was ineligible for compensation under the Walter Lomas Act when he applied for compensation and benefits that the act entitles people who have been wrongfully incarcerated to.

A year later, the law was revised to include situations like Jones’ but instead of admitting that their office was wrong when they originally charged Jones for the crime, the state prosecutors opposed his petition for reparations.

As Neel Lalchandani, one of Jones’ lawyers and a partner at Baltimore’s Brown, Goldstein & Levy law firm, told the outlet, “We had always left the door open for communication with the State’s Attorney’s Office to try to reach a resolution that would save everyone a lot of time and energy and, most importantly, save Mr. Jones from having to go through another legal proceeding. But we weren’t getting any traction.”

So she dug in her heels and forced the state to relitigate the case, during which point she and her team of lawyers exposed the flawed criminal justice process that resulted in her client’s initial conviction.

Due to findings that highlighted issues such as unreliable eyewitness testimony, questionable forensic evidence, and possible official misconduct in the original trial, the administrative judge declared Jones legally innocent and approved the compensation he had requested.

Michele Nethercott, formerly the director of the Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said that Jones’ case illustrates the resistance of the justice system to admitting and fixing their mistakes, even when they affect an innocent man’s life.

“It just shows how recalcitrant the system is to acknowledging and remedying error. I’m glad for him, and I’m glad some justice finally prevailed. Personally, I wish it had not taken this long,” Nethercott told the Baltimore Banner.

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