A 69-year-old man has been exonerated after spending 17 years in prison for second-degree murder.
Cooley Law School’s Innocence Project and the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit secured its second exoneration and release from prison this month with the Tuesday exoneration of Dell Crawford.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Tracy Green vacated Crawford’s conviction Tuesday and dismissed the charge against him.
Crawford served 17 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing Tatanisha “Joy” Williams in Detroit, according to Cooley’s Innocence Project. Crawford went to Williams’ home on Sept. 10, 2007, after he wasn’t able to get in touch with her and found her body in her home with two of her children.
“Mr. Crawford has served 17 years in the Michigan Department of Corrections for a crime he did not commit,” Cooley Innocence Project attorney Niquole Caringi said in a statement. “At the time of trial, there was no physical evidence implicating Mr. Crawford, and the case was based largely on the changing statements of a witness. The DNA exclusion under the victim’s fingernails demonstrates what Mr. Crawford has been telling us for the last 17 years: That he had nothing to do with this crime.”
Williams died from being struck in the head and had defensive wounds on both hands, according to Cooley. DNA testing at the time didn’t find any male DNA, but a retest of the evidence found that a mixture of two men’s DNA was there, and neither was a match for Crawford.
Crawford’s conviction was based on the testimony from an unreliable witness whose story changed multiple times during the investigation and prosecution.
“We can’t give you back that time, but we can certainly try to do the best that we can to right wrong,” Green said, according to the Cooley Innocence Project. “Your conviction was not the only tragedy here. There is perhaps someone out there who has gotten away with the murder of Miss Williams, and that is almost as disturbing as the amount of time you have spent in prison as an innocent man.”
This is the Cooley Innocence Project’s 10th exoneration in 25 years. Others who have been exonerated include Kenneth Wyniemko (2003), Nathaniel Hatchett (2008), Donya Davis (2014), LeDura Watkins (2017), Kenneth Nixon (2021), Gilbert Poole (2021), Corey Quentin McCall (2021), George DeJesus (2022) and Louis Wright (2023).
The project also has assisted in the exonerations of Lacino Hamilton, Ramon Ward, Terance Calhoun, and Crystal Mulherin, Duane Williams and George Calicut Jr.
Calicut was exonerated and released from prison earlier this month.
kberg@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit man exonerated by DNA result, freed from prison after 17 years
Reporting by Kara Berg, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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