A man wrongfully imprisoned for 16 years for a gruesome murder says his conviction happened because police manipulated and falsified evidence that ultimately led to his incarceration.
Kenneth Nixon was supposed to spend life in prison after he was found guilty in 2005 of killing a 1-year-old and a 10-year-old in a house fire in Detroit. He was only 18 at the time. He even told the judge during his sentencing that he was “about to sentence an innocent man in prison.”
Thanks to the work of criminal justice activists, Nixon didn’t spend life in prison. After the Cooley Law Innocence Project partnered with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit to reopen an investigation into his case in 2021, a judge dismissed his charges and vacated his sentence once it was discovered that he received an unfair trial.
Now, the exonerated 37-year-old seeks legal retribution to right the wrongs he suffered. Nixon is suing the city of Detroit and some city police officials for their part in fabricating evidence in his case and framing him for the arson-murder.
During his trial, authorities relied on the testimony of the 13-year-old sibling of the two children killed in that fire. The teen told jurors that Nixon was at the scene of the crime, but he gave conflicting accounts of what happened that night, including where he was in the house and if he saw Nixon throw a Molotov cocktail at the home.
Additionally, in exchange for leniency, a jail informant told investigators that Nixon admitted to the arson even though the informant only saw news coverage of the case.
Prosecutors were skeptical of the testimonies at the time.
Against those testimonies, the accounts of three witnesses who saw Nixon that night and maintained his innocence were not enough to vindicate him.
Nixon’s girlfriend was even with him the entire night but reportedly could not testify as a co-defendant. The boyfriend of the mother whose children died…
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