NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Emel McDowell, 50, was 17 years old when he went to prison for a 1990 killing in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Now a new investigation by the Brooklyn District Attorney's Conviction Review Unit has "confirmed that another individual fatally shot the victim, as Mr. McDowell has consistently maintained," DA Eric Gonzalez said.
For 19 years, McDowell asserted his innocence in the killing of 19-year-old Jonathan Powell after a fight at a Bedford-Stuyvesant house party on October 27, 1990.
Rather, he insisted that the shooter was his friend. Witnesses came forward, corroborating that story.
Finally, in 2007, a key piece of evidence was uncovered: A letter written by that friend in 1991 saying, "I don't think I deserve to walk the face of the Earth because one of my friends is locked up for something that he didn't do."
McDowell took a plea deal and got out of prison in 2009. His lawyers said he was pressured to plead guilty, taking a manslaughter plea, to get out of prison.
"Our legal system failed Emel McDowell when he was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1990 and his release years later was conditioned on an admission to a crime he did not commit," Gonzalez said in a press release, adding "today we will ask to give him his good name back."
As for the person who did commit the crime, an investigation is continuing, prosecutors said.
Since 2014, the CRU unit has resulted in the reversal of 35 convictions, according to the prosecutor's office. CRU currently has about 50 investigations open.
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