A New York man has been freed from prison after having spent nearly two decades behind bars for a robbery he didn’t commit.
Kenneth Windley, 61, was linked to the 2005 crime after he bought his mother a stove with a money order that he didn’t know was stolen. He was convicted of second-degree robbery and sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
A Brooklyn judge tossed his conviction after prosecutors re-examined his claims of innocence and concluded that he wasn’t involved in the crime.
“It has taken many years, but today we are able to validate his account, release him from prison and exonerate his name,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.
Windley, 61, said outside the courthouse, according to The Associated Press: “It cost me 20 years, but they said they corrected it now. So that’s all that matters.”
Windley’s conviction was connected to a robbery on April 1, 2005, in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood. Two men followed a 70-year-old man into his apartment building and robbed him in the elevator, stealing $485 in cash and two blank, unsigned money orders, one for $542, the other for $9, according to a review of the case that the prosecutor’s office released Monday.
Authorities connected Windley to the crime after he used the larger money order to buy his mother a stove. He was arrested when the victim identified Windley as one of the men who went through his pockets, according to the review.
At his 2007 trial, Windley denied that he was involved in the robbery and testified that he’d used the money order only after he bought it from two men outside the appliance store for as much as $400, according to the review.
He said that he knew the men were “hustlers” and sold things on the street but that he believed he was helping them by buying the order, the review says.
Windley testified that he’d never used a money order before and didn’t ask whether it was stolen, according to the review.
Windley was convicted of second-degree robbery in March 2007. Because of previous felony convictions, he was sentenced to 20 years to life, the prosecutor’s office said.
Windley eventually tracked down the men, who were incarcerated for a series of robberies that began in 2005 and targeted elderly men who were returning home from the bank, according to the release.
The men, who haven’t been identified, confirmed for the prosecutor’s office that Windley wasn’t involved in the Crown Heights robbery.
Their accounts were corroborated with recorded prison phone calls and emails, the prosecutor’s office said.
Iran’s new supreme leader reportedly survived the Israeli strike that killed his father because he stepped outside the compound for a walk in the garden minutes before the blast.
Leaked audio from a meeting about the Feb. 28 strike on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s compound revealed that his son, the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, was with his father in Tehran when he stepped out “to do something,” The Telegraph reported.
The audio also revealed gruesome details about the strike, with Iran’s military chief blown to bits, so that all that was left to identify him was “a few kilos of flesh.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son-in-law was also found with his head split in two from the blow.
As soon as Mojtaba was away from his father, Israel’s space-faring Blue Sparrow ballistic missiles hit the compound, killing Khamenei and dozens of his senior officers and family members but sparing his successor.
“God’s will was that Mojtaba had to go out to the yard to do something and then return,” Mazaher Hosseini, head of protocol for Khamenei’s office, reportedly told Iranian leaders in a private meeting on March 12.
“He was outside and was heading upstairs when they struck the building with a missile. His wife, Ms. Haddad, was martyred instantly,” Hosseini added.
Hosseini maintained that Mojtaba only suffered “a minor injury to his leg,” echoing recent reports about the new leader’s wounds.
Hosseini also informed Iran’s senior clerics and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders that at least three missiles were used in the strike on Khamenei’s compound.
One of the missiles struck where Khamenei was stationed, with another missile hitting Mojtaba’s home on an upper floor and the home belonging to his brother-in-law, Misbah al-Huda Bagheri Kani, according to the leaked audio.
“The missile was so powerful that it went downstairs where Mr. Misbah was, it went to Mr. Misbah’s room,” Hosseini said. “The missiles were struck in a way that cut his head in half.”
Hosseini noted that Mostafa Khamenei, Khamenei’s eldest son, survived the attack with his wife, coming out of the destruction “unharmed.”
The official also mentioned the state in which the body of Iran’s military chief, Mohammad Shirazi, was found after he was killed in the strike.
“He was blown to pieces – they could find nothing from him, and at the end they found a few kilos of flesh and identified it as his body,” Hosseini said, according to the leaked audio.
The leaked audio surfaced amid speculations over Mojtaba’s condition, with the supreme leader nowhere to be seen since the start of the war.
As rumors suggest that Mojtaba is far more injured than what is being presented by the state, President Trump speculated that the new leader may not even be alive.
“A lot of people are saying that he’s badly disfigured. They’re saying that he lost his leg, one leg, and he’s been hurt very badly. Other people are saying he’s dead,” Trump told reporters on Monday.
“We haven’t seen” him “at all,” Trump said, adding that US officials don’t know “if he’s dead or not. Nobody’s seen him, which is unusual.”
