Latino inmate on Death Row freed after nine years in Texas prison

CNN

An intellectually disabled construction worker was freed Wednesday after nine years in a Texas prison, including four of them on death row, after his initial conviction for murdering a year-old infant was overturned.

Manuel Velez, whose IQ is 65 and who is functionally illiterate in his native Spanish as well as English, was convicted in Brownsville in 2008 for murdering the year-old son of his then-girlfriend. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Velez in his appeal, said Velez was 1,000 miles away working construction in Tennessee when the child was injured.

Velez's initial court-appointed attorneys failed to discover that evidence, and "after his conviction, Manuel received the death penalty, largely because a state prison expert presented false testimony to persuade the jury that Manuel would pose a danger to society if given life without parole instead," the ACLU said.

On Wednesday, an ACLU attorney described Velez, now 49, as an innocent man who was put on death row for a crime he didn't commit.