Darien Harris was released from prison earlier this week after serving 12 years for a crime he did not commit.
He was only released after it was found the trial's key witness, who claimed to have witnessed the events that landed Harris in jail, has been blind this entire time.
Harris was convicted of murder in 2014, just before his high school graduation, and was sentenced to serve 76 years in prison. The only video evidence at the time of the incident was video of a man, whose identity was difficult to determine, get out of a car, run across the screen and then fire shots off camera.
Harris, who had no criminal record prior, was picked out of a lineup by Dexter Saffold, the main witness of the shooting, and then charged and convicted.
In 2019, it came out that at the time of the incident, Saffold was legally blind, confirming that he has been suffering from glaucoma this entire time. Mr Saffold said of the prosecutors in the case, "They didn't do anything wrong because they didn't know. I didn't have to tell nobody about my medical history."
Four years later, Harris was finally exonerated by a Cook County judge. He was kept in custody while prosecutors planned to retry him, but they have since abandoned their case.
Mr Harris' lawyer Lauren Myerscough-Mueller said per the BBC, "Justice is supposed to be blind. The eyewitness is not supposed to be blind. That is not how the justice system is supposed to work."
Harris now plans to attend law school, so he can help other people who are wrongfully convicted clear their names.
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