Baltimore Approves a $48 Million Settlement for Wrongfully Convicted “Harlem Park Three”

The city of Baltimore’s spending board unanimously approved a $48 million settlement for a group of men who were wrongfully convicted of murder and incarcerated for nearly four decades.

The “Harlem Park Three” — Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, and Ransom Watkins — were exonerated of murder in 2019 after each spending 36 years in prison. The then-teenagers were accused of murdering DeWitt Duckett, a Baltimore junior high school student, over a Georgetown University basketball jacket in 1983.

Attorneys for the men filed a lawsuit on their behalf shortly after the trio was released from prison in 2019. The lawsuit accused three former Baltimore Police detectives of misconduct, including coerced and fabricated witness statements, and further alleged that the alleged misconduct was a “result of a pattern and practice that existed within BPD at the time of their arrest and prosecution.”

Read the source article at WYPR