After years of work on the part of the University Innocence Project, Maligie Conteh boarded a bus as a free man for the first time in several years. A wrongful robbery conviction in 2010 had put him behind bars. Lawyers from the University Innocence Project managed to get his conviction overturned Sept. 13 — just days before Conteh was scheduled to be deported to Sierra Leone.
Conteh was arrested for robbery after police identified him as matching the physical description of someone who had committed robbery at knife-point 15 minutes earlier.
“He didn’t need money,” said Deirdre Enright, director of investigation for the Innocence Project. “He didn’t have a knife or money on him when the police searched him.”
His conviction was overturned because the prosecution failed to reveal a prior criminal history of a major witness in the case.
“Just a month before the robbery, the alleged victim had himself been charged with possessing fraudulent documents and driver’s license which would have caused the judge to doubt his testimony,” Enright said.
Enright became aware of the situation when a fellow professor introduced her to a lawyer at the firm McGuireWoods, who was working on Conteh’s deportation case. Conteh’s lawyer, Jonathan Blank, was confused about the deportation case because, as he explained to Enright, he feared Conteh was getting deported for a crime he did not commit.
Conteh said he was on the Internet at the time the crime was committed. A Facebook photo posted by Conteh proved he could not have been at the scene when the robbery occurred, Enright said.
“We went to the judge and obtained the Facebook records, which was very easy to do,” Enright said. Because these records were not revealed during Conteh’s first trial, the judge made it clear he would acquit Conteh if the Attorney General’s Office attempted to retry the case.
Enright said a series of clear mistakes had been made during the judicial process that led to a wrongful conviction and potential deportation.
“Our entire system relies on everyone doing the right thing, and, in this case, this is what happened,” Enright said. “The kid isn’t the kind of kid who would do this. He didn’t match the description of the suspect.”
Enright will attend a small celebration in northern Virginia in honor of Conteh’s acquittal this week.
The Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on pending litigation.
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