https://news.yahoo.com/michigan-man-imprisoned-nearly-4-153623975.html
Omar Abdel-Baqui, Detroit Free Press
Mon, December 14, 2020, 3:31 PM EST
Walter Forbes was a full-time student at Michigan's Jackson Community College in 1982. He had dreams of owning a real estate development firm after graduating.
One night that year, Forbes broke up a bar fight. He didn’t know that would change his life forever.
A man involved in the bar fight shot Forbes the next day, according to court documents.
The damage the gunshot did to Forbes’ body may have taken a few months to heal, but what happened next led to him spending nearly four decades in prison, leaving deep lifelong wounds on him and his family.
The man who shot Forbes, Dennis Hall, died in his apartment in Jackson, Michigan, in a fire that appeared to be deliberately set on July 12, 1982.
Because Hall and Forbes were recently involved in an altercation, police considered Forbes a suspect in the arson. Police arrested him at his home.
Forbes was convicted of arson and murder in May 1983 and was sentenced to life in prison.
Forbes, 63, became a free man on Nov. 20, more than 37 years after his conviction, after the prosecution’s star witness admitted fabricating her story and evidence surfaced that the fire may have been part of an insurance fraud scheme orchestrated by the apartment building owner, which led to a retrial, according to documents filed in Jackson County Circuit Court.
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After a judge granted an evidentiary hearing in February 2020, Kennebrew testified “that she had falsely implicated Mr. Forbes because she had been intimidated into doing so by two local men who knew her from around the neighborhood and who had threatened to harm her and her family,” according to court documents.
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As for the alleged insurance scheme, the apartment building’s owner, David Jones, was convicted in a separate arson conspiracy scheme in Livingston County, Michigan, in 1990.
A man died in the Livingston County fire as well, court documents say, and the two people who admitted to conspiring with Jones to burn the building down in 1990 told police they were aware of Jones’ role in the 1982 fire in Jackson.
Jones received more than $50,000 in insurance money for the Jackson fire, far above market value for the building. He had bought the property more than eight years before the fire but insured it only two months before the fire, according to court documents that cited reports from the fire investigator on the case.
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Black people make up about 13% of the U.S. population but account for about half of all exonerations and 54% of homicide exonerations since 1989, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
“Up until I was convicted, I thought the system would work, that it would correct itself. In hindsight, I was naive," Forbes said.
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Once somewhat readjusted, Forbes wants to be an entrepreneur, collaborating with friends on their existing companies. He’s especially interested in construction.
Chiefly, he said, he wants to ease suffering in the world and spread good where he can.
“I am still trying to figure out the most effective way to help others,” Forbes said.
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