Davontae Sanford might've been a man when he was exonerated, but he was no man when he was wrongfully framed, forced into a confession and convicted for a quadruple murder he did not commit.
He was just a boy ? a black boy, completely blind in one eye and developmentally impaired ? who was found by police wandering in a Detroit neighborhood in his pajamas the night the murder took place in a nearby drug house.
He wasn't bloody. He didn't have a murder weapon. He wasn't covered in gunshot residue from the dozen bullets he would've had to fire to kill four people. He wasn't seen going in and out of the house by eyewitnesses. He wasn't known as a local thug who'd kill you if you crossed him.
He was just young and black, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Only 14 years old, Davontae Sanford, after being picked up by police in his pajamas and taken to a local precinct, was interrogated for two days without an attorney or any family present. Finally, Sanford confessed. Any child under so much pressure would've considered the same thing.
Even though no evidence backed up Sanford committing the crime, and his outrageous confession got more details wrong about the case than it got right, police made it stick. Officers falsely claimed Sanford drew a diagram of the crime scene. That never happened. Whatever Sanford knew, he knew because police told him. It stuck, though.
From that day in September 2007 until last month, Davontae Sanford never saw another free day. Convicted for all four murders, he was tried as an adult, and sentenced to 37 to 90 years in prison.
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Davontae Sanford spent each and every day of those nine years in prison. Like most of us would've felt, he wanted to die and attempted suicide while incarcerated. Anything seemed better than being there ? for the rest of his life.
Then, four full years ago, another man, Vincent Smothers, already in prison for eight other murders, confessed it was him who shot and killed four people in the drug house that night in 2007. He had been hired to do it as he had been hired before. He had never even seen or heard of Davontae Sanford and openly said Sanford played no role whatsoever in the murders. Year after year, Smothers continued to claim the crimes as his own, offering details that only the murderer could've known. Attorneys for Davontae Sanford repeatedly attempted to appeal the conviction, but were denied. In 2014, Smothers even offered a 26-page affidavit in which he detailed every single aspect of the crime.
Finally, earlier this year, local prosecutors agreed to hear the case and the wheels were set in motion to free a man who had his childhood stolen from him. Davontae Sanford, in June, without even an apology from prosecutors or police, walked out of prison when a Detroit judge ordered his release because of a wrongful conviction. Truthfully, no price can be paid to make up for what this young man lost. That, though, is no excuse for how the city and state have handled it. In addition to receiving a large settlement for what he experienced, Davontae Sanford should be wrapped with every single support service available to help guide him through the next phase of his life.
Furthermore, the officers who concocted evidence and coerced the confession should be arrested and tried for what they did. Not only did they allow a murderer to go free, during which he killed many more people, they ruined a child's life.
