After being freed from prison by DNA evidence after 20 years, Sharrif Wilson 38, died Saturday night at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan; a year later
According to a statement from Sharrif Wilson’s attorney Adam Perlmutter, Wilson died Saturday night after suffering from breathing problems and other health issues, less than a year after DNA evidence exonerated him on all charges for which he unjustly served an humiliating 22 years in prison.
He was a healthy, young, 15-year-old-boy. And he came out a broken, morbidly obese individual whose health care wasn’t really well monitored and maintained by state prison authorities,
says Perlmutter.
Wilson, along with his friend Anthony Yarbough, was arrested in 1992 for the slaying of Yarbough’s 40-year-old mother, his 12-year-old sister and 12-year-old cousin in a Brooklyn housing project. Yarbough was 18 years old at the time of the alleged crime and Wilson was still a minor at only 15 when they were accused of murder. Last year, the evidence came along in the form of a DNA sample from an unsolved rape-murder committed in 1999. It matched DNA found under the fingernails of Yarbough’s mother, indicating that the same killer probably committed both crimes. In 1999, Yarbough and Wilson were both in a NYS prison and couldn’t have committed the second murder.
Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth P. Thompson said his office reviewed “newly discovered scientific evidence that was not available at the time of the trial.”
Based on this new evidence, I believe a jury would have been more likely to return a different verdict.
-Sha Be Allah(KingPenStatus)
