2014/04/11
Brooklyn Daily Eagle April 11, 2014: Brooklyn tops national chart for wrongful convictions.
Tuesday afternoon, a Brooklyn courtroom erupted with shouts of joy. Jonathan Fleming, 51, was announced released from prison after serving 25 years for a murder he did not commit. “Thank you God!” was yelled from the rows of seated spectators. “Come and hug your mother,” a Fleming supporter commanded of the newly-freed man.
Evidence revealed that Fleming was 1,000 miles away on vacation in Orlando in 1989 when Darryl "Black" Rush was shot to death. Fleming vociferously protested his arrest and subsequent conviction, producing plane tickets and other documentary evidence, to prove that he was not in the New York area at the time of the murder. Police investigators and then prosecutors countered that evidence with the argument that Fleming took a quick flight from Orlando to New York, killed Rush and took the next available flight back to Orlando.
“Fleming’s case had not been in front of anyone for 25 years,” Fleming’s attorney Anthony Mayol told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in an exclusive interview. more