🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Two brothers were freed from a Michigan prison after serving 25 years for the rape and murder of a woman they didn't commit.
A judge vacated the convictions of Melvin and George DeJesus on Tuesday for the murder and rape ofneighbor Margaret Midkiff in 1995. The two men were sentenced to life in prison despite a lack of DNA evidence connecting them to the crime and after witnesses testified that the men were somewhere else when the crime occurred, The Detroit News reported.
"I'm thankful that the truth is finally realized," George DeJesus said during the virtual hearing on Tuesday. "I realize that justice for us opens up old wounds for the Midkiff family. I just hope one day our families can all heal and we can have a relationship."
The Michigan Attorney General's Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) conducted an investigation with the help of the Cooley Law School Innocence Project and the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic. They found that the DeJesus brothers were wrongfully convicted.
"On behalf of the state of Michigan, I offer you our deepest apologies for all the years that have been taken from you," Robyn Frankel of the CIU told the brothers during Tuesday's hearing. "We'd like to change what happened, but we can't."
On July 11, 1995, a woman was found nude in the basement of her home in Pontiac, about 30 miles outside of Detroit. Midkiff had a pillowcase over her head and wires binding her neck, wrists and ankles, according to WDIV. Police determined that she had been sexually assaulted and an autopsy showed she was kicked to death, The Detroit News reported.
Police ran DNA from the crime scene and linked it to a man named Brandon Gohagen. He eventually confessed to sexually assaulting Midkiff but claimed he was forced to do it by Melvin DeJesus. He also claimed that the DeJesus brothers were the ones who killed her, according to WDIV.
During the murder trial in 1997, the DeJesus brothers said they were at a party the night of the murder, but there were inconsistencies about whether the party was on Friday or Saturday night. Officials said there were concerns about the accuracy of their story and the jury ultimately found them guilty of first-degree murder. They were sentenced to life without parole at the Michigan Department of Corrections, according to WDIV.
In exchange for testifying against the brothers, Gohagen took a plea deal for second-degree murder and first-degree criminal sexual conduct and was sentenced to a maximum of 35 years in prison, according to The Detroit News.
During the CIU investigation, officials corroborated the brothers' alibis the night of the murder from witness statements shortly after the crime, some of which weren't available during the trial, according to The Detroit News.
The investigation uncovered new DNA evidence from 2016 against Gohagen for the 1994 rape and murder of Rosalia Brantley, 22, who lived in Pontiac. Her body was found wrapped in a window curtain in Hawthorne Park. Gohagen was convicted of her murder in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison, The Detroit News reported.
The investigation linked Gohagen to 12 other women who were sexually abused. The CIU determined that Gohagen was solely responsible for the crime the DeJesus brothers spent the last 25 years in prison for.
Update 3/22/22, 1:18 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
