Dan Lackey, a learning-disabled man from Syracuse, was imprisoned more than three years for a crime he didn’t commit. The Syracuse Post-Standard pieces the story together about how it happened even though a judge and at least one juror thought the evidence was unconvincing. The key evidence was a confession Lackey supposedly made to a police officer.
The judge threw the case out after evidence emerged that the accuser had fabricated charges of another supposed sexual assault. In the meantime, Lackey’s family had spent $50,000 on his defense.