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Live TV



BALTIMORE TO PAY $48 MILLION TO 3 MEN WRONGFULLY CONVICTED FOR MURDER AND
IMPRISONED FOR 36 YEARS

By Jay Croft, CNN
Published 5:28 AM EDT, Sat October 21, 2023
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart and Ransom Watkins after their exoneration and
release in 2019 .
CNN  — 

Baltimore has agreed to pay $48 million to three men who were wrongfully
convicted of murder as teenagers and spent 36 years in prison.

“These are men who went to jail as teenagers and came out as young grandfathers
in their 50s,” Baltimore Police Department chief legal counsel Justin Conroy
told the city’s Board of Estimates before the panel approved the payment on
Wednesday.

Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart were 16 when they were
arrested on Thanksgiving Day 1983, according to the federal lawsuit they filed
after being freed. They were charged in the murder of DeWitt Duckett, 14,
allegedly killed for his jacket in school. They were convicted of first-degree
murder and sentenced to life in prison.

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Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Mary Stewart, left, walks with her son, Andrew Stewart and her daughter, Ulonda
Stewart, after his release.

But they were declared innocent decades later, after Chestnut filed a public
records request. He discovered new evidence that was kept from his attorneys
during trial and contacted Baltimore’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which was
reviewing old convictions.

Investigators “ignored eyewitness evidence and physical evidence that
contradicted their chosen narrative, including evidence pointing to a different
suspect. Instead, they shaped the evidence to implicate Plaintiffs — including
by coercing false testimony from young witnesses,” the trio’s 2020 lawsuit said.

A “John Doe” who actually killed DeWitt and fled the school with his jacket had
died, the suit said.

“On November 25, 2019, three days before Thanksgiving Day, a judge granted the
writ of actual innocence (jointly filed by Plaintiffs and the State of Maryland)
and ordered their immediate release,” the suit said.

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby at the time said there was
“intentional concealment and misrepresentation of the exculpatory evidence,
evidence that would have showed that it was someone else other than these
defendants.”

She apologized to the men when they were released and vowed to work for reforms
for people wrongly convicted.

The Board of Estimates on Wednesday approved the lawsuit settlement 5-0.

The three men had no comment, one of their attorneys told CNN on Friday.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Maryland's highest court prevents reinstatement of Adnan Syed's conviction in
'Serial' podcast case

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in a statement read at the meeting that
settlements like it “speak to gross injustices” against residents and said the
families involved deserve compensation.

“Our city is in a position where in 2023 we are literally paying for the
misconduct of (Baltimore Police Department) officers decades in the past,” Scott
said. “This is just part of the price our city must pay to right the wrongs of
this terrible history.”

In a statement published on WBAL-TV.com, City Council President Nick Mosby, who
is also chair of the Board of Estimates, said “our hearts are with Alfred
Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, Ransom Watkins and their families.”

“Nothing in this world can make up for the mental and emotional trauma that has
been put on these innocent men and their families. No amount of compensation can
right the wrongs of 36 years of turmoil and the residual effects on these men,
their families, and communities.”

View on CNN



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