Washington man has murder conviction overturned after 32 years

Published November 20, 2014

A man who spent decades in jail after he was wrongfully convicted of killing a Washington, D.C., cab driver has spoken for the first time about how it ruined his life.

Santae Tribble was jailed in 1980 for the murder of John McCormick after an FBI agent testified a hair found inside a stocking mask matched Tribble's.

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Tribble, who was 17 at the time, always maintained his innocence and had an alibi, but was convicted on the strength of the agent's testimony.

DNA has now proven the hair found at the scene could not have come from Tribble and last week his conviction was overturned after 32 years.

"It was crazy," Tribble told Fox affiliate WTTG. "There were six charges when they broke it all down and on the first four counts, they found me not guilty and that's what I knew was supposed to happen. So when the guilty verdict was read, it just threw me. I couldn't understand it."

"Prior to that, I never knew that a hair could be matched and I had gotten so paranoid at that point I was kind of thinking, well, they must have switched the hair," he told the station. "I know it's not my hair in the stocking mask."

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Newscore contributed to this report.

URL

https://www.foxnews.com/us/washington-man-has-murder-conviction-overturned-after-32-years