NE- 5 Inmates Get Pardon After Real Killer Identified

1-27-2009 Nebraska:

OMAHA, Neb. -- Five people wrongly convicted of a 1985 Beatrice murder have been pardoned.

Three of the six people convicted in the rape and slaying of a 68-year-old Helen Wilson spent nearly 20 years in prison. One didn't seek a pardon because his conviction was overturned.

It's the first time in Nebraska history that DNA evidence led to inmates being freed from prison.

The pardon, granted Monday by the state's three-member Board of Pardons, doesn't expunge their criminal records. But it does restore their civil rights, such as the right to vote, serve in the military and be issued a passport.

After the exoneration last year, Attorney General Jon Bruning said, "Twenty years ago, in the deal of making a community feel safe again to solve an unthinkable crime, the former county attorney and some members of law enforcement bullied six innocent people into admitting crimes they didn't commit."

Bruning announced in November that DNA evidence conclusively linked Bruce Allen Smith to the murder. Smith died of AIDS in 1992.

Police said Smith killed Wilson and acted alone. Smith had been suspected in the case in 1985, but the results of lab tests performed at the time disqualified him.

Beatrice Police Chief Bruce Lang said blood evidence that a former sergeant kept led them to Smith.

"We know the blood in the bedroom was his," Lang said in November. "There was blood on part of her clothing that was his. There was semen found in her that was his."

Thomas Winslow was one of the five exonerated prisoners. After walking out of the Department of Corrections last year, he said justice was delayed but no longer denied.

"(I’ll) just try to put my life together, that’s what I’m going to do,” Winslow said. "The truth finally came out. Sorry is enough, because I already forgave everything."

Winslow always maintained that he had no memory of the incident. In court in October, he told the judge that he pleaded no contest because police and prosecutors threatened to send him to the electric chair.

He said that during his time in prison, he began to believe that he did commit the crime. ..News Source.. by KETV7.com