Man who had served more than 34 years of a 400-year sentence shown to be wrongly convicted and released
"I never lost hope and always knew this day would come," Sidney Holmes, now 57, said when he learned he would walk free, according to a statement from the Innocence Project of Florida, which worked on his case. "I cannot wait to hug my mother in the free world for the first time in over 34 years."
Accused of being the driver for two unidentified men who committed the robbery, he was convicted by a jury in April 1989 and sentenced the next month, according to the state attorney's office. Weeks later, the victim's brother saw a brown Cutlass driving down a road and reported the license plate number to authorities. That car was registered to Holmes, the Innocence Project said.
Based on the recent review of the case, prosecutors "determined that Holmes had a plausible claim of innocence because of how he became a suspect and because of the precarious eyewitness identification that was the principal evidence against him at trial," the state attorney's office said.
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