by 57-year-old Sidney Holmes was wrongly sentenced to 400 years in prison for armed robbery and was released on Monday after serving more than 34 years of his sentence.
Holmes was arrested in October 1988 and convicted in 1989 of driving the getaway car in which two strangers robbed a man and a woman at gunpoint outside a convenience store. The two men also stole the victim’s car, according to Broward County District Attorney Harold Pryor. Holmes maintained his innocence and contacted the district attorney’s conviction review unit in November 2020.
“Prosecutors from the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) found that Holmes had a reasonable claim of innocence because of the manner in which he became a suspect and because of the poor identification of eyewitnesses who were the main evidence against him at trial,” Pryor said. New CRU research has come to this conclusion “recognition error” will have occurred by the witness, who saw him behind the wheel of a brown 1970s Oldsmobile Cutlass in South Florida.
Part of the misidentification involved a civil investigation launched by the brother of one of the victims, based on certain similarities between his car, an “extremely unusual Oldsmobile, and the car used by the thieves, which ignored the differences between the two cars and was , probably a wrong vehicle identificationPryor continued.
Other than the mistaken identity, there is no evidence linking Holmes to the thieves, and six people were willing to testify that, At the time of the crime, the man was at his parents’ home in south Florida celebrating Father’s Day.
However, prosecutors sought 825 years because Holmes had prior convictions for armed robbery and because he refused to name co-conspirators. The judge felt that 825 years was excessive, he chose 400.
“I would never lose hope”
After his release, Holmes hugged his mother. “It’s surreal. I would never give up hope,” Holmes told reporters. “I knew this day would come sooner or later and today is the day. I can’t put it into words, it’s amazing. I can’t be hateful, I just have to move on.”
400 years imprisonment. Sidney Holmes was wrongly convicted of armed robbery in 1989 and sentenced to 400 years in prison – even though there was NO evidence that he committed the crime. Absolutely heartbreaking… thankfully, 34 years later Holmes is finally free! #TwoAmericas pic.twitter.com/sGeDPU2Ouk
– Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) March 16, 2023
“I just praise God and thank everyone who was so good to make this day possible,” said mother Mary Holmes. “It’s over. Too, too, too late,” added sister Nicole Mitchell.
$50,000 a year in prison for wrongfully convicted
The Convictions Review Unit opened in 2019. Since then, Holmes is the second wrongfully arrested person to be exonerated. “It keeps us honest. It ensures the integrity of the prosecution process. So I strongly believe in the importance and credibility of these units because they ensure that we find the right person and that we exonerate a person who has been wrongfully convicted.” said the prosecutor.
Less than 24 hours after Holmes was released, the Florida Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice met in Tallahassee to vote on legislation to improve a law aimed at compensating the wrongfully convicted.
Although the law must provide exonerees $50,000 a year in wrongful imprisonment, only 10 of the state’s 84 exonerees were compensated, according to the Innocence Project of Florida. “It has very strict eligibility criteria. Right now, Holmes would not qualify under the law because he has a criminal record,” said Seth Miller of the Innocence Project. “So that’s one of the things that the bill going through the Legislature would change.”
