After spending 28 years on death row, a man who was wrongly imprisoned for the murder of a 4-year-old girl has been finally freed.
Innocent man
The 55-year-old man, Walter Ogrod, was freed on June 5 after a judge in Pennsylvania finally overturned his conviction for the murder and sexual assault of 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn.
It is believed that Ogrod was forced to confess that he killed the child, he told NBC 10 Philadelphia that the "knee was partially lifted from his neck." Horn was his neighbor and the child was found in a cardboard box, brutally murdered and assaulted.
James Rollins, Ogrod's lawyer, stated that his client was relieved and pleased that he is announced innocent of the crime.
Ogrod will attend a family barbecue to celebrate his release. Atty. Rollins said that Ogrod and his family lost 28 years, years that they could have spent together.
Prosecutor Carrie Wood apologized to Ogrod and said that she is sorry that it took them 28 years to understand what the victim was trying to tell them, that Ogrod was innocent and the confession that he did 28 years ago came from the police detectives of Philadelphia and not him.
In July 1988, the body of the 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn was found in a cardboard box and was left in the street near her home.
Ogrod was 23-years-old at that time and he was a driver for a bakery when he was arrested in 1992 for the sexual assault and murder of Horn. His lawyers told the court that the informers made up false statements from him.
Ogrod was diagnosed in autism and is said to have been forced to confess on a crime that he did not commit just to solve the case. At his first trial, Ogrod retracted his confession. This was backed up by five eyewitnesses who claimed they the man who left the cardboard box containing the body of Horn, and they all said the suspect does not look like Ogrod.
Even though his first trial ended in a mistrial, Ogrod was still convicted at a second trial in 1996 and he was charged of first-degree murder and attempted involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
However, in January 2020, a DNA test found the sample from the crime scene and it shows that it does not match Ogrod, and the prosecutors later concluded that there is no evidence linking Ogrod to the murder of Horn.On June 5, both his conviction and death sentence were overturned.
Opened case
Sharon Fahy, the mother of Barbara Jean, was among those who asked Judge Shelley Robins-New from Philadelphia, to release Ogrod. According to Fahy, she wanted justice and not just a closed case with an innocent person in jail.
The judge lowered his conviction to third-degree murder, thus allowing him to be released on bail. Ogrod was held at the State Correctional Institution Phoenix in Skippack, and he faced a third trial. He was then proven innocent and has been released.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Pennsylvania has the fifth-highest number of inmate on death row, out of all the states in America. Despite having such a high number, Pennsylvania only carried out three executions of inmates since 1976.
