MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Thomas Raynard James was 23 years old when he walked into prison on March 6, 1991. He was supposed to serve life. Corrections freed him on Wednesday afternoon — after 32 years and 52 days behind bars for crimes prosecutors said he didn’t commit.
James, 55, stood in front of reporters as a free man. He was no longer in handcuffs or wearing the orange jumpsuit that he was forced to wear when he walked out of the South Florida Reception Center in Doral on Wednesday morning.
“I’m going to go spend some time with this lady right here,” James said pointing to his 80-year-old mother. “That’s next!”
James’s fight for justice wasn’t over. In Florida, people who are wrongfully convicted are eligible to receive up to $50,000 for every year of wrongful imprisonment. That would have been about $1.6 million, but James doesn’t qualify for post-conviction relief.
James was arrested for marijuana possession on July 1, 1989. Florida doesn’t have to pay up when a convicted felon is the subject of a wrongful conviction, but his attorney is challenging that rule.
James believes the impossible is possible. He stood next to Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle as she announced that her team’s Justice Project investigation found that he did not kill Francis McKinnon on Jan. 17, 1990.
Assistant State Attorney Christine Zahralban told Circuit Judge Miguel M. de la O in court that their probe revealed James was wrongly convicted of first-degree murder, armed robbery with a firearm, armed burglary, and aggravated assault with a firearm.
“Mr. James, your conviction and sentence is hereby vacated.”
And just like that, De La O exonerated James. He walked out of the Richard E. Gerstein Justice Building as a free 55-year-old man who would no longer have to die in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
Related story: Prosecutors find man who spent 3 decades in prison was wrongfully convicted of Miami-Dade murder
Watch Crime Specialist’s interview
Read the 90-page motion prosecutors filed