Baltimore, November 26 (RHC)-- In the U.S. state of Maryland, three men who were wrongfully imprisoned in 1983 have walked free from prison after spending 36 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit. 

Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart were 16-years-old when they were arrested and jailed on charges of shooting 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett in the hallway of Baltimore’s Harlem Park Junior High School allegedly because they wanted to steal his jacket. 

Charged with murder, the three were convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but always maintained their innocence.  Over the past several months new evidence surfaced, pointing to the man who was the actual shooter.  Investigators reinterviewed witnesses and looked anew at the evidence, finding that witnesses had been coached and coerced by investigators to say they'd seen the three, after twice failing to pick them out of a lineup.  

Thirty-six years later, now in their 50s, the three men were released after a review of the case revealed multiple errors, including the fact that the state’s attorney lied about the evidence, and that the police pressured teenage witnesses.