After serving 15 years for a brutal murder, a judge in the US State of Tennessee has exonerated a man who ruled that he had been wrongly convicted of the murder.
The Davidson District Attorney’s Office announced that after four years of efforts by the attorney to exonerate him, Joseph Webster “no longer has confidence in the conviction against Mr. Webster” and recommended that the charges be dismissed. According to CNN, a statement from Webster’s attorney Daniel Horwitz, his release will be the first in Nashville history since the Davidson County Sentencing Review Unit was established in 2016.
He was transferred from Tennessee Prison Department to downtown Nashville Detention Centre on Tuesday evening, where his lawyer said he was released.
Webster was convicted of the 1998 murder of Leroy Owens for first degree murder, according to the court. Owens was at a friend’s house when two men arrived at the house in a white van and started beating Owens over alleged drug debt, documents show.
Owens escaped, lost a shoe, and ran to another house. The resident asked Owens, who was bewildered, injured and scared, to leave. When he tried to run again, the men caught up with Owens and he was fatally attacked with a concrete block, court documents show.
At the time, witnesses identified the man who killed Owens as Joseph Webster, but friends of Webster said that his relative had admitted the murder.
According to CNN, court documents read:
“After a decade and a half in prison for a murder that he did not commit, I am overjoyed that Joseph Webster’s wrongful conviction will finally be overturned,” said Horwitz. “Mr. Webster is also thinking of the entire Owens family at this time, which has to process the painful news of learning that the wrong person was convicted of committing this brutal murder.”
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