Seven years after Henry Myron Roberts died in prison while serving time for a murder he did not commit, prosecutors acknowledged that they convicted the wrong man.

According to Roberts, an armed man broke into his home in the middle of the night on May 11, 1991, and attempted to steal his television. The two men got into an argument and Roberts was shot in the chest. His nephew Henry Robert Harrison, who was staying with him at the time, was mistakenly shot at by the assailant and killed.

After suffering serious wounds, Roberts passed out. Upon regaining consciousness, Roberts found his nephew dead. While hospitalized for his wounds and recovering from surgery, Roberts gave several inconsistent descriptions of his attacker.  Furthermore, prosecutors identified the murder weapon as a .22 caliber handgun registered to Roberts and found buried in a nearby creek handgun. Roberts claimed that it had been stolen in a previous robbery. Prosecutors contended that Roberts was the killer and had purposely shot himself to cover up the crime.

The 63 year old Roberts steadfastly maintained his innocence, but initially sought to avoid jail time by agreeing to a plea bargain that would have resulted in a suspended sentence for manslaughter. However, Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Johnson rejected the plea deal as unduly lenient. Roberts went to trial and was convicted of second degree murder in January 1992. Throughout his prison sentence, Roberts proclaimed his innocence.

Shortly after Roberts had been sentenced, an anonymous female caller told police that 18 year old Robert James Tomczewski had committed the crime. This tip was filed away and Henry Roberts languished in prison. In 2000, a new witness came forward and implicated Tomczewski. Richard D. Stone told police that he witnessed Tomczewski break into Roberts’ home on the night in question and heard the subsequent gun shots. Stone was seventeen at the time of the murder and came forward nine years later after being racked with guilt. Tomczewski was interviewed while incarcerated on an unrelated assault charge. He initially denied any knowledge of the murder. However, his cellmate told police that Tomczewski had previously confessed that “a long time ago, he had killed a guy in an old man’s house.” Tomczewski pleaded guilty to the murder in 2002 and was given a ten year sentence.

When prosecutors sought Henry Roberts’ release from prison, they learned that he had died of heart failure on December 22, 1995, after collapsing outside of his cell at the Maryland House of Corrections. He was 65. Roberts maintained his innocence until the very end, but did not live to see his vindication.

Technorati Tags: MAIP, Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, Wrongfully Convicted, Henry Myron Roberts

This entry was posted on Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Cases, exonerations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.