US man gets R76 million deal for wrongful conviction

24 June 2015 - 15:44 By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Jonathan Fleming, who was cleared last year of a murder conviction after a decades-old phone receipt supporting an alibi emerged, has reached a $6.25 million settlement with New York City for his years of imprisonment. The agreement, reached on Tuesday with the office of the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, reflects that office’s strategy of trying to resolve wrongful-conviction cases before lawsuits are filed. Stringer, whose office announced the settlement, has reached similar resolutions with other wrongly convicted men recently.Fleming was set free last year after spending 24 years of a 25-years-to-life sentence in prison. He had been convicted of killing a rival drug dealer in 1989 in Brooklyn, but had maintained he was in Florida at the time of the murder.In 2013, a conviction-review unit at the office of the Brooklyn district attorney examined Fleming’s case. In the case file, investigators found a receipt showing that Fleming made a phone call at 9:27 p.m. in Orlando, five hours before shooting at 2:15 the next morning, making it nearly impossible for him to have returned to Brooklyn to commit the crime.In April 2014, a judge with state Supreme Court in Brooklyn vacated Fleming’s conviction. “Mr. Fleming spent nearly half of his life behind bars for a crime that evidence available at the time proved he could not have committed,” Stringer said in a statement.-2015 New York Times News Service..

There’s never been a more important time to support independent media.

From World War 1 to present-day cosmopolitan South Africa and beyond, the Sunday Times has been a pillar in covering the stories that matter to you.

For just R80 you can become a premium member (digital access) and support a publication that has played an important political and social role in South Africa for over a century of Sundays. You can cancel anytime.

Already subscribed? Sign in below.



Questions or problems? Email helpdesk@timeslive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00.