A Baltimore man named Malcolm Jabbar Bryant has been exonerated and set free after spending 17 years in prison for a murder that new DNA evidence has finally shown he did not commit.
Malcom was arrested in 1998 when a ‘single eyewitness’ identified him as the man who stabbed a 16-year-old girl named Toni Bullock to death on November 20, 1998. He and his family always maintained he was innocent and tried all sorts of appeals and several different post-conviction procedures to no avail.
However, Michele Nethercott, of the University of Baltimore’s Innocence Project, took up his case & eventually obtained court orders to test the victim’s fingernail clippings and T-shirt for DNA, which happened to have a rare identifier that was not consistent with Bryant’s. The DNA tested showed that blood on the victim’s T-shirt did not match his and Bryant’s attorneys asked for a new trial which was granted by a Baltimore Circuit Court judge.
Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby said that the Conviction Integrity Unit re-investigated the girl’s murder and concluded that Bryant is indeed not the killer. After serving almost two decades behind bars, he was finally cleared and set free. Pictures of him after he was released from jail below.
Photo Credit: @MelserWBAL