FORT WORTH (1080 KRLD)- A Fort Worth man who was oversentenced in a 1997 shooting now has a completely clean record.
Aaron Dyson had been sentenced to 50 years in prison in connection with a 1997 shooting of a man who had killed his best friend.
Dyson was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and engaging in organized crime, the latter resulting from testimony that he was a member of the R-13 gang, which was not true.
The Texas Supreme Court vacated his organized crime conviction in 2021, and he was released from prison since he had already served more than the statutory maximum for his one remaining charge.
Now, on Monday, Tarrant County Court Judge Andy Porter has dismissed the aggravated assault charge as well, leaving Dyson with a clean record.
"I feel that it was because of overambitious prosecutors not searching for justice but searching for victories back in the 1990s," says the now-44-year-old Dyson; "and unfortunately, I was a victim to that."
Dyson says he will seek wrongful imprisonment compensation from the state.
"I spent the rest of my teens, all of my 20s and all of my 30s, and the first few years of my 40s incarcerated for a crime that I didn't commit," says Dyson. "So that leads me to a situation where I have not been invested in 401(k). I have nothing invested into Social Security, so I can't draw from that if I was to get hurt."
Dyson says he has not pinpointed how much money he'll be seeking.
"I'm even willing to even negotiate," Dyson says. "I just want to be put into a situation where I'm not financially struggling for the rest of my life and working into when I'm in my 70s and 80s because of the years that I lost."
These days, Dyson is working as a stonemason, building things like outdoor kitchens, firepits and patio extensions.
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