Podcast: Sins of Detroit, Davontae Sanford's Road to Freedom, part 2
George HunterTwo weeks after 15-year-old Davontae Sanford was sent to prison for a quadruple homicide he insists he didn’t commit Detroit police made an arrest that threw the case into chaos.
A hitman named Vincent Smothers confessed to 12 murders — including the four for which Sanford had just been convicted. Prosecutors charged the hitman with 8 of the murders he’d confessed to, but despite Smothers’ detailed confession about the other four murders that had been blamed on Sanford, including telling police where one of the murder weapons was hidden, Smothers was never charged with those four killings.
Innocence advocates say prosecutors wanted to avoid a trial to cover up their wrongful conviction of a teenager, while prosecutors insist they merely followed the evidence police gave them.