Family members of two people serving life sentences inside Minnesota prisons renewed their calls to see their loved ones released on Friday afternoon.
Deaunteze Bobo has been in prison for 18 years after he was convicted in aiding and abetting first-degree murder in the 2006 deadly drive-by shooting of James Roberts outside what used to be Stand Up Frank’s Bar in North Minneapolis.
Bobo’s family believes new evidence, including an informant who’s admitted to lying about their story, is enough to set Bobo free.
Nakisha Armstrong is the mother of Bobo’s two sons, and founded the Wrongfully Incarcerated Family Council for Us.
Armstrong said Friday inside the Hennepin County Government Center that Bobo has taken advantage of “everything and every program the prison has to offer.”
“We have a new County Attorney, and I respect her agenda surrounding wrongful convictions,” Armstrong said. “We are still dealing with the pains of our past, meaning police brutality and an inhumane justice system. Deaunteze Bobo is still sitting in prison for a crime that he did not commit or have anything to do with. This injustice is only creating more harm and trauma.”
Family members of Jermaine Ferguson, who’s also serving a life sentence, joined in calling on Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and his office’s Conviction Review Unit to review both cases and others alike.
"We don't want people to get away with murder and other violent crimes," says Michelle Gross with Communities United Against Police Brutality. "We don't want that to happen. But you are letting it happen when you put the wrong person in prison. And that's our demand is to address the false imprisonment of people that were wrongfully convicted, but to also do it in enough time that the actual perpetrators can be found and that those families of the victims can receive justice."
The Attorney General's Conviction Review Unit (CRU) most recently recommended that the 2001 conviction in Aitkin County of Brian Pippitt for first-degree murder be vacated.
That recommendation came in a 181-page report that took the CRU staff more than 1,100 hours to complete.
Myon Burrell, who was released from prison after seeing his life sentence get commuted in 2020, was at Friday’s press conference, but did not speak directly to reporters during the news conference.
Gross said there are hundreds of cases being considered by the Conviction Review Unit.
“It’s going glacially slow and they only have one staff member, they need a lot more," she says. "One thing we’ll bring to the next legislative session is a bill to get more funding for the CRU. It needs to have much more funding, they just need to have many more staff.”
John Stiles, a spokesperson for Attorney General Ellison’s office, told WCCO Radio in a statement on Friday afternoon, "We review every application we receive carefully, but we do not disclose the identities of individual applicants nor comment on ongoing investigations.”