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An Oklahoma man used pandemic relief funds to have his name cleared of murder_我的网站

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谁还记得中国男足上一次踢正式比赛是什么时候？255天前，2025年东亚杯，中国男足1-0小胜中国香港男足。 GREENWOOD, Ark. -- Ricky Dority spends most of his days playing with his grandchildren, feeding chickens and working in the yard where he lives with his son's family.It's a jarring change from where he was just several months ago, locked in a cell serving a life prison sentence at Oklahoma's Joseph Harp Correctional Center in a killing he said he didn't commit. After more than two decades behind bars, Dority had no chance at being released — until he used his pandemic relief funds to hire a dogged private investigator. The investigator and students at the Oklahoma Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University, which is dedicated to exonerating wrongful convictions in the state, found inconsistencies in the state's account of a 1997 cold-case killing, and Dority's conviction was vacated in June by a Sequoyah County judge.Now, the 65-year-old says he’s enjoying the 5-acre property in a quiet neighborhood of well-to-do homes in the rolling, forested hills of the Arkansas River Valley outside of Fort Smith. “If you’re gone for a lot of years, you don’t take it for granted anymore.”Dority is one of nearly 3,400 people who have been exonerated across the country since 1989, mostly over murder convictions, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. In Oklahoma, there have been more than 43 exonerations in that time, not including three new exonerations this year. The cases underscore a serious problem facing a judicial system in which many old convictions resulted from overworked defense attorneys, shoddy forensic work, overzealous prosecutors and outdated investigative techniques.The problem is particularly acute given Oklahoma's history of sending people to death row, where 11 inmates have been exonerated since 1981. The issue has pushed a Republican-led legislative panel to consider whether a death penalty moratorium should be imposed.In Oklahoma County, Glynn Ray Simmons was freed after spending nearly 50 years in prison, including time on death row, in a 1974 killing after a judge determined prosecutors failed to turn over evidence in the case, including a police report that showed an eyewitness might have identified other suspects.And just this week, Perry Lott, who served more than 30 years in prison, had his rape and burglary conviction vacated in Pontotoc County after new DNA testing excluded him as the perpetrator. Pontotoc County, in particular, has come under intense scrutiny for a series of wrongful convictions in the 1980s that have been the subject of numerous books, including John Grisham’s “The Innocent Man,” which he produced into a six-part documentary on Netflix. The most common causes of wrongful convictions are eyewitness misidentification, misapplication of forensic science, false confessions, coerced pleas and official misconduct, generally by police or prosecutors, according to the Innocence Project, a national organization based in New York.In Dority's case, he said he was railroaded by an overzealous sheriff and a state prosecutor eager to solve the killing of 28-year-old Mitchell Nixon, who was found beaten to death in 1997.Investigators who reopened the case in 2014 coerced a confession from another man, Rex Robbins, according to Andrea Miller, the legal director of the Oklahoma Innocence Project. Robbins, who would plead guilty to manslaughter in Nixon's killing, implicated Dority, who at the time was in a federal prison on a firearms conviction. Dority said he knew he didn't have anything to do with the crime and found paperwork that proved he had been arrested on the day of the killing.“I thought I was clear because I knew I didn’t have anything do with that murder,” Dority said. “But they tried me for it and found me guilty of it.”Jurors heard about Robbins' confession and testimony from a police informant who said Dority had changed bloody clothes at his house the night of the killing. They convicted him of first-degree murder and recommended a sentence of life without parole.After years in prison, while most inmates spent their federal COVID-19 relief check in the commissary, Dority used his to hire a private investigator, he said. Bobby Staton had mostly investigated insurance fraud, but he took on the case and realized quickly that it was riddled with holes, Staton said. He eventually turned to the university's Oklahoma Innocence Project, which assigned a law student, Abby Brawner, to help investigate.Their investigation turned when Staton and Brawner visited Robbins in the maximum-security Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite, and he recanted his statement implicating Dority. “It was pretty intimidating,” Brawner said. “Especially when you're going in to meet someone who doesn't know you're coming and doesn't want to talk to you.”Brawner and Staton also learned the informant didn't live at the home where he told investigators Staton showed up in bloody clothes. When the actual homeowner testified at a hearing this summer, the judge dismissed the case.Dority's original attorneys were ineffective for not discovering the informant didn't live at the home, the judge said, giving prosecutors 90 days to decide whether they will retry him. That three months has been extended, and prosecutors have said they intend to ask the judge for more time for DNA testing. Dority, confident in his innocence, said he's not concerned about additional forensic testing.Sequoyah County District Attorney Jack Thorp and former Sheriff Ron Lockhart did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press. But Assistant District Attorney James Dunn, who is overseeing the case and was not in the office when it was originally prosecuted, said he agreed with the judge's dismissal after hearing the homeowner's testimony and learning a witness “was not credible.” “The last thing I want to see is an innocent person in prison for a crime they didn't commit," Dunn said. "Because that means the person who actually did commit the crime, or those persons, are still out there.” Meanwhile, Dority is learning to use a smartphone and the television remote control, he said. He's thankful to Staton and the Innocence Project and says his case proves others are wrongfully imprisoned in Oklahoma.“After they’ve done what they’ve done to me, I know there are people in that prison who are innocent that need to be out and need help getting out,” he said. “If they hadn’t gotten me out, I’d have been in there for the rest of my life.”。那场比赛之后，中国男足进入了漫长的空窗期。期间，球队一度没有主帅，而正式比赛，一等就是8个多月。如今，这场等待终于要结束了。

B | 北京时间3月27日，中国男足将在主场迎战库拉索队。这是一场国际足联系列赛，也是国足时隔255天之后的第一场正式比赛。对手库拉索，听起来有些陌生，但这支球队有一个醒目的标签——2026年世界杯的参赛队伍。没错，库拉索是本届世界杯的48强之一。

C | 这个人口仅16万的小岛，却在世预赛中一路杀出重围，历史性地闯入世界杯正赛。他们的主教练弗雷德-吕滕，是荷兰足球的老面孔，阵中也有多名效力于欧洲联赛的球员，整体实力不容小觑。对于中国队来说，这场比赛的看点其实不止于胜负。

D | 一方面，这是新帅邵佳一执教以来首次在正式比赛中亮相，球队的战术框架、人员组合究竟如何，需要真刀真枪的检验。

E | 另一方面，面对一支世界杯新军，国足能否打出足够的比赛内容，同样值得关注。过去这8个月里，中国足球经历了太多，国家队层面也面临着新老交替。而这场时隔255天的正式比赛，将检验这支国足当下的真实水平。

F | 对手是世界杯新军，但人家已经站在了2026世界杯的舞台上，而中国队，已经开启了2030世界杯周期——这个对比本身就足够扎心。当然，一场比赛说明不了全部，但球迷等得太久了！他们看中的未必是结果，而是一支知道自己该怎么踢、敢于按照自己的方式去踢的球队。就像库拉索主帅赛前说的那样：“中国队能跑90到95分钟，纪律严明。