Innocent Man Bobby Johnson Freed After 9 Years In Prison For A Murder He Did Not Commit

After nine years serving in a prison for a crime that he did not commit, Bobby Johnson was released on Friday, according to sfgate.

He had been forced to confess and plead guilty to murder at the age of 16. Records show that his IQ had been below the mental impairment line.

The 24-year-old was greeted and hugged by his family and friends who came out to support him on Friday, after he walked out as a free man from the New Haven Superior Court.

"It's crazy. I'm still trying to grasp everything now. It's crazy. Oh man, it's beautiful." Johnson said.

His lawyer, Kenneth Rosenthal, along with the Connecticut Innocence Project, had been trying for years to get him his freedom from the 2006 shooting death of 70-year-old Herbert Fields, when he had been robbed in New Haven.

Johnson, then 16, was arrested along with a 14-year-old friend.

Rosenthal claims that the New Haven police had forced him to confess though he had an IQ of 69, which was just below the threshold of 70, considered mental impairment, CBS News reported. Johnson broke down sobbing even as the police grilled him, and Rosenthal says that the police promised that they would give him probation if he confessed.

However, after his "confession" to the murder, he was sentenced to 38 years in prison---which was not the "promised probation". His 14-year-old friend was held for 18 months and then acquitted in court, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Rosenthal picked up the battle and fought it for five years because the evidence is clear. Another person not only killed Fields but committed two other similar murders in six weeks after Johnson was convicted.

His lawyer Kenneth Rosenthal along with the Connecticut Innocence Project, needs to be appreciated for winning "several exonerations of wrongly convicted people" over the past decade.

New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington and Chief State's Attorney's Prosecutor Timothy Sugrue filed a motion Wednesday requesting that Johnson's conviction be set aside.

Rosenthal is now expecting that Johnson would file a "wrongful incarceration claim" with the state, which would actually make him a millionaire, according to hngn.