Annapolis, md. (AP) – A man from Maryland who was wrongly locked up for 32 years, including a decade in the death cell, for two murders that he did not commit, former law enforcement officials announced in a lawsuit announced on Thursday, although four of the five people mentioned as defendants have died.
John Huffington was granted grace by then-gov. Larry Hogan in January 2023. Hogan quoted misconduct of the prosecution when granting a complete innocence pardon to Huffington in connection with a double killing in Harford County. A Maryland board approved $ 2.9 million in compensation later that year for Huffington during the GOV government. Wes Moore.
Huffington said on Thursday in a statement that “it took many, many painful years, but the truth eventually came out.” Only 18 at the time of his arrest, he said that none of his parents ever see and understand that his name had been erased and he was released.
“All those years that I had damaged and had stretched my relationships, took me the opportunity to have my own family, I took the opportunity to be with my mother when she died, took me valuable time with my father who was in the nineties and suffered from Alzheimer's when I was finally released,” he added.
Huffington, 62, always maintained his innocence. He was released in 2013 from Patuxent Institution after having kept two lifelong sentences.
He was convicted twice in the murders that are known as the 'Memorial Day Murders'. Diane Becker was stabbed to death in her recreational vehicle, while her 4-year-old son who was inside was not harmed. Joseph Hudson, Becker's boyfriend, was deadly shot and found a few miles (kilometers) removed. A second suspect in the slaughter witnessed against Huffington, was convicted of murder in the first degree and served 27 years.
Public Prosecutors trusted testimony who was later discredited about her found on the crime scene that is reportedly corresponded to that of Huffington.
He appealed against his first conviction in 1981. In 1983 a jury found him guilty of murder in the first degree and was sentenced to death. Public prosecutors later converted that sentence to two conditions of life.
There were questions about evidence in the case when the Washington Post revealed an FBI report in 2011 that the FBI agent found who analyzed hair confirmation in the Huffington case may have not used reliable science, or even tested the hair completely. The report was written in 1999, but the lawyer Joseph Cassilly of Harford County did not give it to Huffington's lawyers.
A judge of Frederick County surprised Huffington's convictions and ordered a new trial in 2013 after Huffington had presented new evidence with the help of DNA tests that were not available during his earlier tests. When hair certificate was tested on DNA more than 30 years later, the results showed that it was not Huffington's hair.
Maryland's highest court unanimously voted in Dishbar in 2021. He found the court relieving evidence in the double murder in 1981 and lied over it in the coming years.
Cassilly, who claimed that he was not doing anything wrong, retired in 2019. He died in January.
His brother, Bob Cassilly, who is now the Harford County director, said in a statement that his brother was a decorated war hero who was injured as he served his country and served as a state's lawyer in a wheelchair for 36 years.
“Joe cannot defend himself in this decades old because he has now died, just like the other defendants mentioned, except one who is almost 80,” said Cassilly. “Harford County Government, in which I currently serve as a district leader, does not play a role in this case – the province was never the employer of the defendants.”
Huffington also sues the assistant's lawyer in his case, Gerard Comen, the government of Harford County, and the David Saneman, William van Horn and Wesley J. Picha van Harford County, and the office of the County Sheriff. Everything but Saneman are now dead, according to the court case that was submitted on July 15 at the federal court in Baltimore.
Saneman told the Washington Post on Wednesday that he had not seen or heard the lawsuit and refused to comment.
