Sidney Holmes, who was sentenced in 1988 to 400 years in prison for an armed robbery in Boward County, north of Miami (Florida, USA), will probably be released this Monday after spending almost 35 years behind bars, local media reported.
Holmes, who now he is 57 years old, he was released today, following a request issued by the Conviction Review Unit of the South Florida County Prosecutor’s Office.
Holmes contacted this unit in November 2020 and claimed he was innocent of the 1988 armed robbery of two people in a convenience store that he had been charged with, he picked up the local channel NBCMiami.
Homes, who was a resident of the City of Lauderhill, received a hefty sentence for being the alleged driver of the vehicle in which two unidentified men were traveling who assaulted and they robbed a man and a woman at gunpoint and stole the car from one of them.
The Conviction Review Unit, in collaboration with the Florida Innocence Project, investigated and found that Holmes made a “plausible” plea of innocence due to how he became a suspect and “The precarious identification of the eyewitness that was the main evidence against him in the trial,” the outlet noted.
Investigators found that an eyewitness identification of Holmes was “likely a misidentification,” in part due to the photo-alignment and line-up practices used by law enforcement at the time.
Broward Circuit Judge Edward Merrigan today signed an order approving the Broward District Attorney’s Office and the Innocence Project’s request to vacate the conviction and sentence against Holmes.