It’s a jarring change from where he was just several months ago, locked in a cell serving a life prison sentence at Oklahoma’s Joseph Harp Correctional Center in a killing he said he didn’t commit. After more than two decades behind bars, Dority had no chance at being released — until he used his pandemic relief funds to hire a dogged private investigator.

The investigator and students at the Oklahoma Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University, which is dedicated to exonerating wrongful convictions in the state, found inconsistencies in the state’s account of a 1997 cold-case killing, and Dority’s conviction was vacated in June by a Sequoyah County judge.

Now, the 65-year-old says he’s enjoying the 5-acre property in a quiet neighborhood of well-to-do homes in the rolling, forested hills of the Arkansas River Valley outside of Fort Smith. “If you’re gone for a lot of years, you don’t take it for granted anymore.”

  • NightLily@lemmy.basedcount.com
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    1 year ago

    BRUH… THE MAN was under arrest when the murder happened good lord I hope that the judge or whatever is tried for mismanagement of this case…

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s shotty work like this which is why I have trust issues with the courts. From judges who are paid by prisons to bump the numbers of inmates, to false testimonies from cops, to DAs and attorneys who half ass their job and innocent people get their lives ruined.

    • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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      1 year ago

      I don’t understand how that doesn’t get brought up in the court room in front of a jury? And what jury would convict knowing the dude was arrested when the murder occurred?

      There’s got to be more to the story than that

      • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s not brought up, because of Jim Carrey’s objection in “Liar Liar”:

        “Because it would be devastating to my case!”

        We can’t have the prosecutor losing can we?