John Bunn cried tears of both joy and frustration after being exonerated for a murder he did not commit, and it took 27 years until this moment of justice to come to fruition.
"I want to say thank you, your Honor, because for 27 years I have been fighting for my life," he told the judge inside a Brooklyn courtroom on Tuesday.
According to WPIX, Bunn has always claimed his innocence in the 1991 Crown Heights shooting.
At the time, he was 14-years-old when he was wrongfully convicted for the murder of Rolando Neischer and the attempted murder of Robert Crosson based on tainted evidence produced by disgraced ex-Detective Louis Scarcella.
The retired NYPD detective was notorious for coercing confessions and manipulating witnesses to give false testimony.
Bunn spent 17 years in prison and was paroled in 2009 for seven years but continued fighting to clear his name by working with attorneys from the Exoneration Initiative. His second degree murder conviction was overturned in 2016.
The 41-year-old was finally exonerated after prosecutors dropped all charges on Tuesday, and he rightfully expressed his resentment at the system with tears streaming down his face in the courtroom.
They won't admit I'm an innocent man. Y'all had the wrong man this whole time and you have (someone) out there running free and y'all had no right to do what you did.
Defense lawyer Glenn Garber said, "There were problems with this case that were very obvious."
There was no probable cause to make an arrest.
An emotional Bunn approached Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Shawn'Dya Simpson after the closed session and grasped her hands in gratitude.
Later, Simpson told the free man and his mother, Maureen, to "Move forward. Keep me posted."
H/T - NYdailynews, Twitter, YouTube, WPIX11
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