Brooklyn man who spent 26 years behind bars exonerated

A Brooklyn man who spent nearly three decades of his life behind bars for a crime that his attorneys say he did not commit walked out of court a free man.
Carlos Weeks spent 26 years behind bars after being convicted of second-degree murder and first-degree assault convictions stemming from a July 1993 shooting at the Tompkins Houses - a crime his attorneys say he did not commit.

The 46-year-old spent much of his prison sentence doing research in the library.
His journey to exoneration started with a letter he wrote to the Legal Aid Society in 2012 detailing his case.

“He laid it all out there, ‘I was convicted on the testimony of two women who said I was on the 12th floor.’ He told us how he had never stopped litigating this,” says Elizabeth Felber, of the Legal Aid Society.
From there, his attorney set out to prove his innocence. His conviction was based on two eyewitnesses. One recanted and the other claimed they did not remember.

“Mr. Cagney and our investigators went actually to the scene and confirmed that no you could not see faces from the window,” says Felber.

This is now the 27th exoneration that the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office has overseen.

“I wish Mr. Weeks a heartfelt good luck. I apologize to him for what happened to him and we have to make sure we continue to root out these miscarriages of justice,” says Gonzalez.