A Hawaii man who spent 30 years in prison for a murder celebrated “Freedom Friday” after a judge ordered him to be released because of new DNA evidence.
There were gasps and cries when Judge Kirstin Hamman said “the sentence is vacated and the defendant is ordered to be released from custody”.
She ruled that new evidence, including DNA test results, would be certain to change the outcome of another trial against Gordon Cordeiro.
Mr Cordeiro’s first trial for the 1994 killing of Timothy Blaisdell on the island of Maui ended in a hung jury, with only one juror voting to convict him.
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But he was later found guilty of murder, robbery and attempted murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
The Hawaii Innocence Project took up his case, and argued he must be released on the grounds of new evidence proving his innocence, ineffectiveness of his previous lawyer and prosecutorial misconduct.
Maui County prosecuting attorney Andrew Martin said he was disappointed in the ruling and that “none of the judge’s findings exonerate him in any way”.
Kenneth Lawson, co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project, said: “He cried, we all cried.
“He believed that he was going to be exonerated… but having gone through two trials, you lose faith in the justice system.
“To finally hear a judge say, ‘I’m vacating your convictions,’ that’s when it hit him.”
Following his release Mr Cordeiro said: “I’d like to go see my mum.”
After Cordeiro’s conviction, new testing on physical evidence from the scene excluded him as the source of DNA on Blaisdell’s body and other crime scene evidence.
The Hawaii Innocence Project said a DNA profile of an unidentified person was found on the inside pockets of Mr Blaisdell’s jeans.
The judge agreed that the new DNA evidence and new information about gunshot residue would change the results of a later trial.