A 41-year-old man has been awarded $1 million after spending 17 years in prison for a crime committed by someone who looked like him.
It was in 2000 when Ricky Jones was falsely imprisoned after being found guilty of aggravated robbery.
But the mistake was recently discovered after the witnesses and the victim of the crime were shown a photo of another man who bore an uncanny resemblance to him.
In addition to having similar looks, the real culprit’s name is also Ricky but his surname is Amos.
Jones was only 24 years old when he was convicted of the robbery in a Walmart parking lot in 1999. Even though he had a solid alibi and insisted that he was at a birthday party with his girlfriend in Kansas City where he was seen by many people, he was convicted anyway.
According to The Washington Post, his conviction was based on the accounts of eyewitnesses who described the attacker as being light-skinned and slender Black or Hispanic with dark hair.
After being sent to prison, Jones tried to appeal his sentence many times but he was repeatedly rejected.
Years later, both Amos and Jones were at the same correctional facility and their similarity was brought to the attention of the courts.
In an affidavit, the robbery victim said: “I am no longer certain I identified the right person at the preliminary hearing and trial. If I had seen both men at the time, I would not have felt comfortable choosing between the two men and possibly sending a man to prison.”
In an interview with ABC News, Jones said: “ hope and prayed every day for this day to come, and when it finally got here it was an overwhelming feeling […] Once I had seen his picture beside mine and I seen the resemblance me and him had, I just knew.
“It was understandable why other people would say the same thing.”
Jones was awarded $1 million compensation and received a certificate of innocence from the state of Kansas when he was finally released.
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