Edgar Barrientos-Quintana left a Minnesota prison a free man last week, 16 years after he was incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit.
Barrientos-Quintana was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 2008 drive-by-shooting and murder of Jesse Mickelson in Minneapolis.
He had a twist of fate earlier this year, however, when the state’s Conviction Review Unit took another look at his case and decided the jury in his trial didn’t hear key evidence supporting his innocence.
On Tuesday, he told reporters he never gave up hope that justice would be served, although he was never sure when his freedom would come.
“I just didn’t know when, and that’s the problem. You know it’s going to happen, but the system is so slow,” he said at a news conference, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. “Happy to be out here. It’s the best week and more to come.”
According to CNN, an August conviction review resulted in a damning report that found several faults in the case against the 41-year-old father of two.
State court Judge John McBride vacated Barrientos-Quintana’s conviction and ordered his release last week. McBride concluded that a fair trial was not given to Barrientos-Quintana because his lawyers did not effectively represent him and prosecutors did not disclose all exculpatory evidence.
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“Nothing can give Mr. Barrientos-Quintana those 16 years back, and for that, we are so sorry,” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said during a news conference Tuesday. “When the criminal system does not function ethically, it causes significant harm.”
At the press conference, Moriarty said investigators used coercive lineup tactics and interrogation tactics, resulting in unreliable eyewitness identifications.
Security footage captured Barrientos-Quintana at a grocery store shortly before the shooting, and the attorney general’s office pointed to phone records not presented at trial that placed him at his girlfriend’s suburban apartment shortly after the shooting. The Conviction Review Unit determined that he could not have traveled to and from the crime scene in that time.
The reviewers also cast blame on police, who showed an old photo of Barrientos-Quintana with a shaved head to eyewitnesses who had described the suspect as being bald. Security footage showed Barrientos-Quintana had short, dark hair at the time of the shooting.
His release comes 11 years after his current lawyer and former director of the Great North Innocence Project, Julie Jonas, started working on his case.
“He lost his freedom and his family lost a son, father, brother, uncle and nephew. It was a tragedy,” said Jonas in a statement obtained by CNN.
“But watching Edgar reunite with over 22 of his family members as he left the prison, while other inmates cheered for him in the background, was a truly joyous moment for all of us.”
— with files from The Associated Press
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