Kiala Yousif
In 1996, Sedrick Courtney was convicted for robbery with a firearm and sentenced to 30 years.Courtney was identified as one of two assailants by the victim saying she “recognized his voice when he spoke and his skin tone and eyes when he briefly lifted his black ski mask during the offence.” The analyst testified a single bleached red hair was recovered from the green ski mask
left as the scene that matched a hair taken from Courtney. However, the victim testified that
Courtney wore the black ski mask.
1. Sedrick Courtney spent more than 15 years in prison and a year on parole for a crime he
did not commit. His conviction was largely due to eyewitness misidentification and
unvalidated or improper forensic science.
2. The Innocence Project took on Courtney’s case in 2007. Despite the Tulsa Police
Department claiming all evidence had been destroyed, repeated requests for evidence
lead them to finding the hairs taken from the ski mask.
3. Mitochondrial DNA testing showed that none of the 15 hairs matched Courtney.
https://innocenceproject.org/cases/sedrick-courtney/
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