Joe Yates
A man who spent 24 years behind bars for a false murder conviction before it was eventually overturned, has been sent back to prison, where he'll spend the remainder of his life.
In November 1990, 78-year-old Puerto Rican businessman Domingo Martinez was robbed and murdered by way of a fatal shooting, and when the case went cold, they began to pin the blame on Shaurn Thomas.
Four years later, in December 1994, a 20-year-old Thomas was wrongfully convicted of the murder and sentenced to life without parole - despite having a solid alibi to prove that he couldn't have committed the crime.
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The Innocence Project states that Thomas was already incarcerated in a juvenile jail at the time the murder was committed, and wasn't released until later that day, when Martinez had already been murdered.
In 2017, at the age of 43, Thomas was finally exonerated thanks to the Innocence Project, and received a huge $4.1 million payout from the city of Philadelphia.
At the time he said per ABC News: "I don't got no animosity towards nobody. What for? Life's too short for that. You can't get it back. I just move on forward. It's a tragedy that happened to me, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one."
But it seems as though that money didn't stretch too far, as six years later he employed one of his girlfriend's childhood friends to sell drugs for him on the street.
Akeem Edwards took $1,200 worth of cocaine off of Thomas to sell for him, but never ended up giving him the money by January 3, 2023.
The millionaire was in the neighborhood with his girlfriend Ketra Veasy, who he met through former inmates, when he spotted the 38-year-old and jumped out the car.
Veasy then heard gunshots and Thomas hopped back into the car putting his gun in his waistband, and when he got inside, Veasy recalled how he told her 'he's hit, he's down, just drive'.
On the drive back to their home in Delaware, Veasy explained how Thomas admitted that he had killed someone before.
Speaking in court, she said: "He said it's his third homicide and he said he can't go back to jail."
Now, seven years on from his release, Thomas, aged 50, has confessed to the killing.
He has pled guilty to third-degree murder as well as other offences, and will be sentenced in February.
Judge Roxanne Covington couldn't believe that Thomas, who is a multimillionaire, committed such a heinous act for such a small amount of money in comparison to his own bank account.
She asked: "Are these facts true?"
To which he replied: "Yes, your honor."