My husband’s attorney, Ron Kuby, recently had a remarkable victory: winning the release of another wrongfully convicted client. It was finally established in court that disgraced former Brooklyn Detective Louis Scarcella had fabricated a false statements by a single eyewitness, resulting in Shabaka Shakur spending 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Judge Green determined that the convicting evidence was sufficiently unreliable to order a new trial, and thankfully the District Attorney declined to retry the case, resulting in Shabaka’s release.
Unbelievably, there is no financial assistance available for the wrongfully convicted from the government or any agency or organization upon release from prison. Shabaka got a bus ticket from the prison system, nothing more, and he needs help just getting by in his new life.
I am in a unique position to appreciate the gravity of this miscarriage of justice. While my husband has been fighting his wrongful conviction for 27 years, Shabaka Shakur has been in prison for all of those 27 years. Not only did Shabaka enter prison before cell phones or the Internet, but the USSR was still on our maps!
— June 22, 2015