A New York man has been exonerated after he spent 16 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit due to surveillance footage.
52-year-old Arvel Marshall was convicted of the 2008 murder of Moustapha Oumaria. In 2009, Marshall was sentenced to 25 years to life in connection to the killing.
Marshall maintained his innocence for years. Amid his trial, Marshall repeatedly requested surveillance video footage of the incident be shown.
The footage showed two young men in the area at the time of the killing. One of the men, who removed an “object” from his waistband, was wearing clothes that matched a description of the shooter given by an eyewitness. A tipster also told investigators that the shooter was a teenager when Marshall was 36 at the time of the crime.
On Friday (August 9), Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez vacated Marshall’s conviction after the DA’s Conviction Review Unit found he was unjustly found guilty. Marshall’s connection was also tossed by a judge and he was released from prison after 16 years.
“An investigation by my Conviction Review Unit found that everyone involved in this case – defense, prosecution, police, and the Court – failed, depriving Mr. Marshall of a fair trial,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “A critical piece of evidence was not turned over, leading to this unjust conviction. The CRU’s work often reveals systemic failures, and this is a prime example of that. We will continue to expose, correct, and learn from every wrongful conviction that took place in Brooklyn.
A suspect in Oumaria’s murder hasn’t been identified.
“They knew I was innocent,” Marshall said following his release. “They knew I could prove my innocence. So, they tried to keep it under the table. They were hoping I’d just shut up and just accept everything that they did to me. And I said, ‘nah, I’m going to fight.’”
