December 18, 2020 - 10:26 AM
JACKSON, Mich. - A man who was sentenced to life without parole in an arson fatality has been freed after 38 years in a Michigan prison after a woman admitted that she lied under oath during his 1983 trial.
Walter Forbes, 63, walked out of Kinross Correctional Facility on Nov. 20 after Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wilson overturned his arson and murder convictions earlier that month.
Annice Kennebrew was the only witness to implicate Forbes in the July 1982 fire at an apartment building in Jackson, Michigan. Dennis Hall was killed in the blaze. Kennebrew, who was 19 at the time, testified that she saw Forbes and two other men set the fire.
Michigan man released from prison after spending 38 years wrongly locked up
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ABCNews When he emerged a free man from Michigan s Kinross Correctional Facility and went directly into eight days of COVID-19 quarantine, Walter Forbes, at age 63, had every reason to be bitter. More than half his life had been spent incarcerated, his dreams of a career in drafting technology had long since been obliterated by the prosecution s star witness, who recanted testimony that put him behind bars for murder.
When the prison door swung open on Nov. 20, Forbes walked out with a trunk full of legal notes and favorite books accumulated during 38 years in a cell. But he said he left with no animosity toward the woman who falsely told the jury that convicted him in 1983 that she saw the then-25-year-old full-time college student and two other men torch an apartment house in Jackson, Michigan, in which an occupant was killed.
Walter Forbes, 63, walked free on November 20 from Kinross Correctional Facility in Michigan
Forbes spent 37 years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted of murder and arson after a man who had shot him died in a house fire
A woman named Annice Kennebrew helped convict Forbes after she testified that she saw him throw gasoline on the building and set it on fire
Kennebrew eventually came forward in 2017 and admitted that she had lied
She testified that she made the false claims after two local men threatened to harm her and her family if she didn t implicate Forbes in the crime