Curtis Crosland’s Innocence Reclaimed by Evidence Police had all Along

The Inquirer reported the story of Curtis Crosland, a man who, in 1984, was convicted of the murder of Il Man Heo based on the statements of two witnesses; one who recanted, and the other who refused to appear in court. On Thursday June 24th, 2021, Crosland was released from prison after 34 years of incarceration with the help of District Attorney Larry Krasner’s Conviction Integrity Unit. The CIU uncovered that investigators concealed troubling details about the witnesses, and ignored evidence of another suspect’s guilt. Crosland was ordered by a U.S District judge to be released or retried, whereby the DA formally dropped all charges against him, citing the prevalence of justice not just in a guilty plea, but in the continuous pursuit of truth. While analyzing court filings and records, the CIU identified clear misconduct; the files were full of evidence that police knew informants were tainted sources of evidence all along. Multiple undisclosed documents were also found, ones that would have supported Crosland’s claim to innocence. In more recent interviews, both witnesses were spoken with, and both admitted to being manipulated and threatened if they refused to testify in Crosland’s trial. After years of collecting evidence of his innocence and filing relief petitions, Crosland was finally released because of evidence that was in the prosecutor's possession from the very beginning. Crosland is now overjoyed to be released, and committed to supporting another innocent man he left behind in prison.

More information can be found at: https://www.inquirer.com/news/curtis-crosland-exonerated-philadelphia-da-ciu-20210625.html