Black Man Freed After 24 Years in Prison for Crime He Probably Didn’t Commit

Rose McIntyre says she wonders whether her refusal to grant regular sexual favors to a white detective prompted him to retaliate against her Black son, who spent 23 years in a Kansas prison for a double murder he didn’t commit, reports the Los Angeles Times. “I do believe that if I had complied with his request for me to become his ‘woman,’ that my son would likely not be in prison,” she said in a 2014 affidavit. Her son, Lamonte McIntyre, 41, walked out of a court hearing on Oct. 13 a free man after Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree asked that charges from the 1994 murders be dismissed because of “manifest injustice.” The case has outraged, but not surprised, the poor Black community of Kansas City, Kansas, and highlights why many African-Americans do not trust police and the U.S. criminal justice system. “In my community, this is a norm,” Lamonte McIntyre said in a telephone interview. “We are not shocked or surprised at the injustice or the brutality … of law enforcement. This is an everyday life for us.” Documents made public during an eight-year effort to exonerate Lamonte McIntyre allege homicide detective Roger Golubski used his power to prey for decades on African-American women, including Rose McIntyre. They also accuse the prosecutor in the case, Terra Morehead, of intimidating witnesses who told her McIntyre was not the killer. And they say the presiding judge, Wyandotte County District Judge J. Dexter Burdette, had a romantic relationship with the prosecutor before the trial that neither disclosed at the time. None of them has faced discipline. Golubski rose through the ranks to detective and captain. He retired from law enforcement last year. Morehead is now a federal prosecutor in Kansas City. Burdette is still on the bench.