{"id":53137,"date":"2022-05-03T17:21:50","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T21:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=53137"},"modified":"2022-05-03T17:21:56","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T21:21:56","slug":"did-you-know-116","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/05\/did-you-know-116\/","title":{"rendered":"Did you know?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Paul Waldmiller<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did you know that a Florida Black man recently had his conviction overturned after serving over 30 years in prison?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Miami judge vacated the life sentence in prison placed against Thomas \u201cJay\u201d Raynard James, a 55-year-old man who prosecutors wrongly convicted because of mistaken identity in 1991.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. James won release last Wednesday after 32 years for the death of Francis McKinnon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At James\u2019 trial, eyewitness Dorothy Watson informed jurors that she was sure that James pulled the trigger. However, beginning last autumn, Watson said she had reservations regarding her past testimony. She initially refused to meet with prosecutors regarding her doubts, but eventually and earlier this month made contact with them and said she now believes she had mistakenly identified James as the gunman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle filed a 90-page motion seeking to have the sentence vacated after years of unsuccessful reviews of the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the motion, prosecutors stated, \u201cWhat appears to be a chance coincidence that the defendant, Thomas Raynard James, had the same name as the suspect named by witnesses and anonymous tipsters\u2026led to the defendant\u2019s photograph being included in a lineup, and set in motion a mistaken identity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Paul Waldmiller Did you know that a Florida Black man recently had his conviction overturned after serving over 30 years in prison? A Miami judge vacated the life sentence… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":53138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[294],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53139,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53137\/revisions\/53139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}