Sidney Holmes, who was sentenced in 1988 to
400 years in prison
for an armed robbery in Boward County, north of Miami (Florida, USA), was released this Monday after spending almost
35 years behind bars
, local media reported.
Sidney Holmes at the time of his arrest (left) and today (Miami Police).
Holmes, now 57, was released following a request issued by the South Florida County District Attorney's Sentencing Review Unit.
Holmes contacted this unit in November 2020 and claimed that
he was innocent
of the 1988 armed robbery of two people at a convenience store that he had been accused of, the local channel
NBCMiami reported.
An unusual sentence
Holmes, who was a resident of the city of Lauderhill, received a
hefty sentence
for being the alleged driver of the vehicle in which two unidentified men were traveling who robbed and robbed a man and a woman at gunpoint and stole the car from one of them. they.
The Conviction Review Unit, in collaboration with the Florida Innocence Project, investigated and found that Holmes pleaded "plausible" innocence due to how he became a suspect and "the poor eyewitness identification that was the primary evidence in against him in the trial," said the outlet.
Holmes hugging his mother and grandmother (Miami Herald).
Investigators found that an eyewitness identification of Holmes was "probably a
misidentification
," in part due to the photo-alignment and line-up practices used by law enforcement at the time.
Broward Circuit Judge Edward Merrigan signed an order yesterday approving the Broward District Attorney's Office and the Innocence Project's request to
vacate the conviction and sentence
against Holmes.
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