Wrongfully Convicted: 3 Men Released From Prison After 20 Years! (DNA Evidence Revealed Innocence Of Murdering Teen Girl)

"They were just 14 and 17 years old when they were
sentenced to a maximum security prison for a crime
authorities now say they did not commit.
Nearly 20 years later, DNA evidence cleared the
two men. The youngest is expected to remain at
Menard Psychiatric Center until Monday, but his
brother was freed Friday. He and his attorney
from the Exoneration Project stopped to talk to me
on their way home to Chicago.
James Harden, his brother Jonathan Barr, and three
others were convicted of killing Cateresa Matthews
as teenagers in 1991. She was 14 when she
disappeared while walking home from school in
Dixmoor, Illinois. Her body was found two weeks
later. She'd been sexually assaulted and shot.
Three of the boys confessed to the crime, but none
of defendants' DNA was found at the crime scene.
It was the catalyst to overturn their convictions.
"I made it!" Harden says. "I made it. I
survived."
James Harden is a free man. At 36 years old, he
spent the last 20 years serving an 80-year
sentence for a crime authorities now say he did
not commit.
"There's a lot of red flags about James's case,"
Tara Thompson, Harden's attorney and staff
attorney at the Exoneration Project, says.
"There's a group of kids who didn't hang out, who
were accused of being friends and being together
when this crime happened, and at the time of the
trials, they knew that there was DNA evidence in
this case that didn't match any of the defendants,
and those things just didn't really fit together.
It's kids -- talking to police and giving
statements without their parents present, without
a lawyer present, and in this case those
confessions were coerced."
Paperwork has kept Harden's brother Jonathan Barr
in prison, but he is expected to be released on
Monday.
"We were there to comfort each other," Harden says
of the prison time he spent with his brother. "I
always told him 'it's going to be alright, keep
your head up. We will be out one day,' and praise
God -- it came."" - 4 News