Selwyn Days
Case Details
Served: 18 years
Year of Exoneration: 2017
Year of Conviction: 2004
Sentence: 50 to life
Conviction: Murder
County: Westchester
Selwyn Days was exonerated on September 12, 2017, after his fifth trial in a false confession homicide case. EXI along with attorneys from Paul Weiss won a new trial for Selwyn in 2009 based on new alibi evidence. EXI then tried the case twice in 2011 with the first ending in a hung jury (9 to 3 for acquittal) and the second in a conviction. The essential evidence against Selwyn, who is intellectually impaired, was his false confession obtained after many hours of interrogation. No physical evidence linked him to the crime, and DNA on the murder weapon belonged to someone else.
On September 2, 2015 in a watershed appellate decision that will help other wrongfully convicted people, the Appellate Division, 2nd Department reversed Selwyn's conviction and granted a new trial based on the lower court’s failure to allow testimony from a false confession expert who could educate the jury on the phenomenon of false confessions.
Selwyn heard for the first time on September 12, 2017, that a jury had found him not guilty of the crimes for which he had originally been sentenced to fifty years to life in prison.
