Baltimore will pay $48 million to three Black men who each spent 36 years in prison for a high-profile killing they did not commit after police wrongly arrested them as teenagers, according to an agreement.
The largest settlement in Maryland history was unanimously approved this week by the Baltimore City Board of Estimates, closing a federal lawsuit brought by the trio after their 2019 exoneration. The men alleged that detectives had a pattern of coercing witnesses, not just in their nearly 40-year-old case.
The State's Attorney for Baltimore City had found them innocent after a reinvestigation. Eyewitnesses renounced previous testimony that had contributed to the wrongful convictions.
"These are men who went to jail as teens and came out as young grandfathers in their fifties," Justin Conroy, the chief legal counsel for the Baltimore Police Department, told the board on Wednesday in a meeting shared on YouTube.
Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart and Ransom Watkins — known today as the "Harlem Park Three" — will each receive $14.9 million. The remaining $3.3 million will cover legal fees, Conroy said.
Authorities arrested the minors in November 1983 for the slaying of 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett. The teenager was walking to class when was accosted over his blue Georgetown jacket and shot.
Chestnut, Watkins and Stewart had been removed earlier that afternoon from the same Baltimore middle school during a visit to their old stomping grounds. Police also found a Georgetown jacket during their Thanksgiving Day search of the Chestnut home, but Chestnut's mother had a receipt for it, said the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, a legal aid group that helped prove their innocence.
A 2018 records request filed by Chestnut shed new light on the case. It uncovered evidence showing multiple witnesses told officials that a different 18-year-old suspect was the shooter. One student saw him flee and dump a gun as police arrived at Harlem Park Junior High School.
