An Oklahoma man serving a life sentence is using his pandemic relief funds to hire a private investigator to help exonerate him from a 1997 murder he didn’t commit.
While other inmates cashed their COVID checks for the commissary, Ricky Dority, 65, tried to prove his innocence, according to reports.
Bobby Staton, who usually investigates insurance fraud, took over the case and realized it had “holes,” the Associated Press reported.
He ended up teaming up with law student Abby Brawner of Oklahoma City University’s Innocence Project to dig into the case.
In 2014, investigators opened the murder case of 28-year-old Mitchell Nixon, who was found beaten to death in Oklahoma in October 1997.
Since his conviction was thrown out in June, Ricky Dority has been able to enjoy life in the vast Arkansas River Valley as a free man.AP
Another man who eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the killing involved Dority, who was in federal prison at the time for a gun conviction.
During the trial, a police informant said Dority changed her bloody clothes at her home on the night of the murder. Dority was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.
But Staton and Brawner discovered that the informant didn’t actually live in the house Dority said she came to that night. When the real homeowner testified in June, the judge threw out the case.
An investigator and students at the Oklahoma Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University found inconsistencies in the 1997 case and Dority’s conviction was vacated in June. UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Now, Dority is enjoying life on her son’s 5-acre property near the Arkansas River Valley, where she spends her time feeding the chickens and playing with her grandchildren.
“After they did what they did to me, I know there are innocent people in that prison who need to get out and need help to get out,” Dority told the AP. “If they don’t take me out, I’ll be there for the rest of my life.
Dority is one of nearly 3,400 people who have been paroled nationwide since 1989, at least 46 of them in Oklahoma.
With Postal wire
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
