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| Corzine Grants Last Minute Release |
| By nj.com |
| Published: 01/19/2010 |
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TRENTON - After spending two decades behind bars for an East Orange murder some legal experts believe he did not commit, Quincy Spruell will be set free, Gov. Jon Corzine said tonight. On his last full day in office, Corzine partially commuted the sentence of Spruell, 43, releasing him on parole for the remaining five-plus years of his 30-year prison term. Spruell, of Newark, has a job and family waiting for him in Baltimore, his supporters said. He will be released from Northern State Prison within the next 30 days. Corzine, who will be succeeded by Gov.-elect Chris Christie at noon tomorrow, did not take a position on Spruell's guilt or innocence in granting him mercy. In a letter accompanying his decision, Corzine said he made the move "in consideration of the fact that noted legal experts and scholars have serious doubts about the propriety" of the conviction but "without opining on the accuracy of those beliefs." Spruell was 19 when he was arrested for the 1985 robbery and killing of a suspected drug dealer in East Orange. He was pressured into signing a confession, which he believed was for a beating he took part in in Orange, not the East Orange murder, said Michael Aron, senior political correspondent for the New Jersey Network who took up Spruell's cause in 1996. Aron said he and others could find no eyewitnesses or physical evidence that connected Spruell to the murder of Leonard Thompson. "He was the victim of a terrible misunderstanding," Aron said tonight. Spruell, who had a minor criminal record, was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison despite the fact two of the chief witnesses against him recanted at trial. A third witness testified she would have told police anything they wanted to hear. The man who fingered Spruell never testified at all. Read More. |
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