DNA clears man convicted of murder who spent 38 years in prison, CA officials say
_fitted.png "A man who spent 38 years in prison was freed after DNA evidence cleared his name, California officials said.")
Roberta Wydermyer was found dead in the trunk of her car with a gunshot wound to the head nearly four decades ago in California.
In 1988, Maurice Hastings was convicted of murder in her death, as well as two attempted murders, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to an Oct. 28 new release from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.
After sitting in prison for 38 years, all while maintaining his innocence, recently tested DNA has helped make him a free man, the district attorney’s office said.
“I’m not pointing fingers. I’m not standing up here a bitter man,” Maurice Hastings, now 69, said during a downtown Los Angeles news conference, City News Service reported. “But I just want to enjoy my life while I have it. And I just want to move forward.”
District Attorney George Gascón described the wrongful conviction as a “terrible injustice,” according to the news release.
“The justice system is not perfect, and when we learn of new evidence which causes us to lose confidence in a conviction, it is our obligation to act swiftly,” Gascón said.
‘No physical evidence’
There was “no physical evidence” linking Hastings to the “robbery-homicide and sexual assault” of Wydermyer in Inglewood, according to a news release from the Los Angeles Innocence Project at Cal State Los Angeles. Additionally, he had “numerous alibi witnesses” who attested to where he was at the time of the crime.
Even without physical evidence, prosecutors sought the death penalty for Hastings, according to the Los Angeles Innocence Project.
“The jury instead sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole,” according to the Los Angeles Innocence Project.
Requests to test DNA
Among the evidence collected from Wydermyer’s body was an oral swab that had semen, according to the district attorney’s office. But that swab was never DNA tested before the trials that put Hastings behind bars, according to the Los Angeles Innocence Project.
Hastings first requested DNA testing in 2000, the district attorney’s office said.
“I have been incarcerated for over fifteen years for a murder that I did not commit,” Hastings wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office in 2000, according to the Los Angeles Innocence Project. “The most compelling of the evidence that has not as of yet been examined is the DNA evidence which will conclusively show that I was not the person involved with the deceased at the time of the crime.”
However, that request was denied, the district attorney’s office said.
Then in 2021, “Hastings submitted a claim of innocence with the District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit,” the district attorney’s office said.
After the evidence was tested and uploaded to the state’s Combined DNA Index System in June of this year, the DNA profile had a match, the district attorney’s office said.
It identified a man who had been convicted in the rape and kidnapping of another woman, the Los Angeles Innocence Project said. The man died while in prison serving his 56-year sentence. Officials did not publicly release the man’s identity.
With the Los Angeles Innocence Project, the district attorney’s office filed a motion on Oct. 20 to vacate Hastings’ 1988 conviction and to release him from prison, and the Los Angeles County Superior Court approved the request, the district attorney said.
“I prayed for many years that this day would come,” Hastings said, according to the Los Angeles Innocence Project.
This story was originally published November 1, 2022 at 1:25 PM.
