Photos: Elijah Craig II/Innocence Project/YouTube Screenshots
Monday, after more than 25 years of wrongful conviction and incarceration, Jabar Walker was finally exonerated in Manhattan following a year-long joint investigation by the Innocence Project and Post-Conviction Justice Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Jabar was convicted in the 1995 murders of two men on 148th Street in Manhattan, following an investigation by officers from New York Police Department’s 30th Precinct. The Precinct was known at the time as the “Dirty 30” due to widespread corruption amongst its officers.
Misconduct in the precinct was so rampant that an investigation into allegations of NYPD corruption resulted in the arrest of 33 officers — a staggering one-sixth of the precinct — in the 1990s. The investigation found that officers there routinely engaged in perjury, record falsification, thefts during searches and seizures, and distribution of narcotics.
