Man was awarded $2,304,979 after being wrongly imprisoned for over 25 years
Clarence Moses-el was given a 48 year sentence in 1987 based on a woman's dream but was given $2 million in compensation after he was proven innocent.
According to the woman, she was allegedly brutally assaulted and beaten in her apartment the night following a party, and later identified Moses-el after believing she'd seen him 'in a dream.'
The attack reportedly took place in the dark in an assault so vicious that it left her with fractured facial bones and the loss of vision in one eye.
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The victim identified three men she had been drinking with earlier and told police that they could potentially be guilty of the attack.
A day later, she said that she had a dream about the night of the attack, in which a man that she knew who went by the nickname 'Bubbles' had allegedly attacked her.
After this information was given, Moses-el was soon arrested and was later sentenced in court to 48 years in prison.
However, Moses-el never stopped fighting against the sentence and insisting his innocence, and later made a claim of 'ineffective assistance of counsel 'against his public defender for failing to obtain DNA testing prior to trial' - with Colorado Courts denying that claim.
A few weeks later, Denver police department threw away physical evidence - including an untested rape kit - into the dumpster, despite it being labelled 'Do not destroy'.
An investigation conducted into the matter cleared the police of any bad intentions and the department later told the Denver Post that 'communication problems' had led to the disposal.
But an investigation into an unrelated rape case set a second trial into motion, where his attorney said that a blood sample collected from the crime scene didn't match Moses-el's.
After his retrial in November 2016 and admission from another man to the assault, Moses-el was acquitted of all charges and was finally released after spending 25 years behind bars.
“This moment is a moment I’ve fought for for a long time,” he told The Denver Post. "I just want to get home to my family, my grandchildren. It’s wonderful, I waited a long time for this.”
However, he had one more fight on his hands..
A law past in Colorado in 2013 stated that individuals who've been wrongly committed of a crime should be due compensation, but at the time Moses-el applied for compensation, the rape allegations he'd not long been acquitted of were being 're-pitched'.
But despite that, he continued to push, and in 2016, after almost 30 years, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said he would 'not oppose a man’s petition for exoneration after he served nearly 30 years in prison for a crime the man says he did not commit' - and accepted his right to compensation.
Moses-el said at the time:"You could surprise and shock and a host of things, because I woke up this morning with phone calls of good news, so I’ve been in a very pleasant, relaxed state."
After three decades of fighting, he was acquitted of all charges and had been handed $2,304,979 for his wrongful imprisonment.
"That’s another reason why I’m happy, because it allows me to regain a lot of things that meant so much to me, so dear to me, that now having possession of these things again, it makes me feel like a full person," he said.
Chelsea Connor