Man released from jail after 23 years for crime he didn’t commit finds freedom surreal – Fox News

DeMarlo Antwin Berry no longer can recognize Las Vegas.

The 42-year-old Nevada man was freed from prison after 23 years behind bars for a crime he didnt commit. He felt a little overwhelmed by changes in the city where he was arrested when he was 19.

On Friday he sat flanked by his wife of seven years and lawyers who fought to get him exonerated and released from his sentence of life without parole. He looks forward to a steak-and-fries dinner and said he just wants to go to barber school and live a normal life.

It was a surreal moment, just taking it all in, Berry told reporters, noting the unfamiliar buildings, homes and freeways he saw.

He had with him only his release papers and a debit card for his prison commissary account. His lifelong girlfriend-turned-wife, Odilia, wasthere.

It means everything to me, said Odilia Berry, wearing a necklace bearing the word Amazin and offering her thanks to God that her husband was free.

The dismissal of Berrys conviction came after Steven Jackson, now 45 and serving life without parole in California for his conviction in a separate murder in 1996, confessed to Samantha Wilcox, a lawyer from Salt Lake City working on Berrys case for free with the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center.

Berrys legal team also found a former jailhouse informant, Richard Iden, who recanted his trial testimony that Berry told him hed killed Carls Jr. restaurant manager Charles Burkes.

They really did the job. They did the footwork. If theywerent as thorough as they were, we wouldnt be here, Berry said as he sat in a posh Las Vegas law office. Id just be another number in prison.

Nevada is one of 18 states in the nation that doesnt provide compensation funds for wrongfully convicted and newly released inmates, said Jensie Anderson, Rocky Mountain Innocence Center legal director. Sheestimated that 4 percent of the 13,500 inmates in Nevada prisons, or more than 500, may be wrongfully convicted.

DeMarlo Berry hugs his attorney Samantha Wilcox following a news conference after his exoneration held at the law office of Eglet Prince in downtown Las Vegas on Friday, June 30, 2017. The 42-year-old Nevada man freed from prison after 23 years behind bars for a crime he didnt commit said Friday he felt a little overwhelmed by changes in the city where he was arrested when he was 19. (Richard Brian/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP) (Richard Brian Las Vegas Review-Journal @vegasphotograph)

DeMarlo Berry shed his shackles in what once was familiar territory. Before he was arrested in April 1994, he used to sell drugs and hangout at a bar several blocks away, according to testimony at his trial in 1995.That bar is gone now, closed as a nuisance by the City Council in 1996.

Las Vegas and surrounding Clark County doubled in population during Berrys time away. Downtown hotels like the Lady Luck closed; Fitzgeralds changed names; and a canopy was built over the Fremont Street corridor that most knew back then as Glitter Gulch.

Berry termed his feeling of freedom sensory overload. He said hed heard people describe his prison time as his entire adult life, but he said he still has a lot adult life in me.

Hell learn in coming days how to use a cellphone, a computer and the internet.

One thing hell keep from behind bars is work ethic, he said.

I figured that in order to be a better person than I was when I came in, you have to learn to do something different, Berry said, so I took it upon myself to learn a trade. Barbering.

Attorney Lynn Davies said it was too soon to say whether Berry would sue over his wrongful conviction and incarceration.

Berry said he wasnt angry.

Forgiving is, I guess, a large word, he said. I just want to continue with life. I have a second chance at life, and Ill take the opportunity.

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Man released from jail after 23 years for crime he didn't commit finds freedom surreal - Fox News