Oklahoma man declared innocent after spending almost fifty years behind bars

Published December 21,2023

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In the longest identified wrongful imprisonment case in fashionable U.S. historical past, an Oklahoma man was declared harmless this week after practically 5 many years in jail for a criminal offense the court docket now says he didn’t commit, in response to a University of Michigan registry of such circumstances.

Glynn Simmons, 71, served 48 years, one month and 18 days for the homicide of a retailer clerk through the armed theft of an Oklahoma City liquor retailer in 1974, in response to the college’s National Registry of Exonerations, which tracks inmates cleared of sentences served for 25 years or extra.

“Freedom agrees with me,” Simmons stated at a press convention after the listening to on Tuesday.

Simmons was wrongfully convicted on the idea of a single witness who lied on the stand on behalf of the prosecution when she stated she had picked him out of a lineup of attainable suspects when she had really recognized others, legal professionals for Simmons contend.

Years later, different witnesses had been discovered who stated Simmons had been at a pool corridor in a close-by metropolis when the theft passed off, the legal professionals stated, in response to a report by the registry.

Based on that, Simmons was declared harmless by Judge Amy Palumbo of the Oklahoma County District Court.

His legal professionals, Joseph Norwood and John Coyle, are actually contemplating litigation in opposition to the state to compensate Simmons for his time in jail.

He had “50 years stolen from him, the prime of his life,” Norwood stated at a briefing.

Neither Norwood nor Coyle had been instantly out there on Thursday to elaborate.

In 1975, the then-22-year-old Simmons obtained the dying penalty within the case, however the sentence was modified in 1977 to life in jail after the Oklahoma Supreme Court dominated that each one dying penalty circumstances ought to be commuted to life with out parole.

Palumbo vacated the conviction in July and freed Simmons, ordering a new trial. But his legal professionals then filed for the declaration of precise innocence and gained.

“When you know you’re innocent, stick with it and don’t ever stop,” Simmons stated. “Don’t let nobody tell you it can’t happen, because it really can.”