Darryl Hunt was exonerated
he was granted a pardon by the Governor and awarded a settlement of more than
$1.6 million in 2007 after spending nineteen years in prison for a murder he
did not commit.
The North Carolina man,
Darryl Hunt was found dead in a car in Winston-Salem on Sunday, the Charlotte
Observer reports.
In 1984 at age 19, Hunt was
charged with the rape and murder of a newspaper copy editor but was later
exonerated in February 2004, after DNA evidence showed he was innocent and led
police to Willard Brown, who later confessed to the murder.
After he was released, Hunt
still had nightmares about his time in jail and the fact that he was wrongly
accused for a crime he didn’t commit. Due to that, he went to the ATM every
day, not necessarily to get money but just so that he could prove where he was
at any-time of the day in case he was wrongfully accused again of another
crime.
Hunt then went on to found
the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, which is an advocacy group for
those wrongfully convicted and travelled across North Carolina, his home state,
with People of Faith Against Death Penalty to speak about abolishing the death
penalty and improving the justice system.
Hunt had recently been
diagnosed of cancer but he didn’t let that stop him from accomplishing what he
wanted to do.
Early Sunday morning, the
police were called about a person believed to be dead in a car near a
University campus. When they got there, they found Hunt unresponsive.
A cause of death has not
been released.
Charlotte Observer reports
Sad
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