A person whose conviction for a 1994 homicide was overturned on new DNA proof says he’s having a tough time adjusting to at the moment’s hyper-connected world after spending the previous 30 years behind bars.
“Everybody is looking at their phones,” Gordon Cordeiro, 51, stated in a Zoom interview shortly after his current launch from the Maui Neighborhood Correctional Middle in Hawaii.
Cordeiro, who went to jail in 1994 for the slaying of Timothy Blaisdell throughout a drug deal gone unhealthy on Maui, made it his first order of enterprise when getting out to go to the grave of his mom, Paulette, who died at age 49 of ALS the identical 12 months he was incarcerated.
“Thanks for looking over me. Keeping me safe,” he stated, addressing his late mother whereas visiting her last resting place, noting that she had ceaselessly been on his thoughts throughout his jail stint.
He additionally loved a steak dinner in Kahului and later visited the graves of different family members. He stated he was planning to make a journey to Costco subsequent to luxuriate in his newfound freedom.
Regardless of struggling to return to phrases with the ubiquity of cell telephones that swept the globe whereas he was in jail, he stated he owes expertise a debt of gratitude for his launch, telling The Related Press, “Thank God for brand spanking new DNA.
“Technology is awesome,” Cordeiro stated.
In line with courtroom paperwork filed by Cordeiro’s legal professionals, he was wrongfully convicted partly as a result of police relied upon 4 jailhouse informants motivated by guarantees of lowered sentences and fabricated murder-for-hire plots.
After Cordeiro’s conviction, new testing on bodily proof from the scene excluded him because the supply of DNA on Blaisdell’s physique and different crime-scene gadgets, the Hawaii Innocence Venture stated. A DNA profile of an unidentified particular person additionally was discovered on the within pockets of Blaisdell’s denims.
Cordeiro, who was 22 on the time of the killing, has maintained his innocence since his trial.
Kenneth Lawson, co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Venture nonprofit, stated cops “botched this case from the beginning,” which put Cordeiro and his household by way of a “30-year nightmare and a miscarriage of justice.”
