California man wrongfully convicted awarded $25M, but can money restore the 38 years he lost despite being innocent?

In what his lawyers are calling the largest wrongful conviction settlement in California’s history, a man who spent 38 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit has been awarded $25 million. Maurice Hastings, 72, was awarded the settlement in August, but it was just made public on Monday.

While this is a lot of money, he said, “No amount of money could ever restore the 38 years of my life that were stolen from me… But this settlement is a welcome end to a very long road, and I look forward to moving on with my life.”

The settlement comes after decades of legal battles during which Hastings continued to plead his innocence. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole in connection with the 1983 sexual assault and murder of a woman named Roberta Wydermyer.

Man wrongfully convicted finally free and richer than rich

According to The Guardian, Wydermyer was killed by a single gunshot to the head. The lawsuit accuses two Inglewood police department officers and the Los Angeles district attorney investigator at the time of framing Hastings. It should have been easy to see, because the original case was full of holes, and it’s not the first time someone was wrongfully convicted of a crime.

The coroner conducted a sexual assault examination and collected the perpetrator’s body fluids at the time of the victim’s autopsy. Hastings sought DNA testing of that evidence in 2000, but at that time, the DA’s office denied the request. In 2021, Hastings submitted a claim of innocence to the DA’s conviction integrity unit, and DNA testing found that the semen was not his. In 2022, when he was 69, Hastings’s conviction was vacated at the request of prosecutors and his lawyers.

The DNA profile was put into a state database and matched to a person who was convicted of a separate armed kidnapping and forced copulation of a female victim who was placed in a vehicle’s trunk. The details of that crime closely resembled the details of Wydermyer’s killing.

Law enforcement apprehended the suspect, Kenneth Packnett, less than three weeks after the 1983 murder in connection with an unrelated car theft. When Packnett was arrested, police found jewelry and a coin purse that matched the items Wydermyer had when she was killed. Packnett wasn’t investigated for Wydermyer’s murder at the time. Packnett died in 2020 in prison, where he was serving a separate sentence, prosecutors said.

In 2023, a California judge ruled that Hastings was “factually innocent,” which means the evidence proves conclusively that Hastings did not commit the crime. Hastings now lives in southern California, where he is active in his church, his attorneys said. “Police departments throughout California and across the country should take notice that there is a steep price to pay for allowing such egregious misconduct on their watch,” said Nick Brustin, an attorney for Hastings.

I honestly can’t believe how someone could serve 38 years in prison for a crime they didn’t commit, especially when the DNA evidence was right there all along. This is awful for anyone who has been in his situation, and it just goes to show how much more work we need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again. It’s a sad state of affairs when we have to rely on a judge to rule someone “factually innocent” after they’ve already served 38 years in prison.