US man freed after 33 years of jailtime after wrongful attempted murder conviction

ISTANBUL (AA) — A California man was exonerated and released after spending 33 years in prison due to a wrongful conviction over an attempted murder in the 1990s, a US prosecutor said Thursday.

Now 55, Daniel Saldana and two others were charged with six counts of "attempted willful, deliberate, and premeditated murder, and one count of shooting," at a vehicle carrying six high school students in 1990, said Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon at a press conference.

According to a statement from the district attorney's office, attackers mistook the teenagers for gang members and opened fire. Two of the students were injured during the incident but survived, while Saldana was convicted and sentenced to 45 years to life in state prison.

"After a thorough review of the evidence, we have determined that Daniel Saldana was wrongly convicted of several accounts of attempted murder. And this is the day that we publicly announced Mr. Saldana is an innocent man," Gascon added.

Lawyer Michael Romano, who helped Saldana and his family throughout the exoneration proceedings, thanked officials and law enforcement "for their hard work and dedication in seeking out the truth about what really happened more than three decades ago," according to the statement from the district attorney's office.

"It is disappointing to know that a deputy district attorney was privy to this information over six years ago at a parole hearing but failed to bring it to light," added Romano, who is the director of Stanford Law School's Three Strikes Project, an office aided by law students to end the long prison terms of those convicted of minor offenses under the country's "three strikes" law.

According to the statement, a 2017 parole hearing disclosed that Saldana was "not involved in the shooting in any way and was not present."

When he was convicted, Saldana was 22 years old and was working as a construction worker.

For his part, Saldana, who was joined by his family, said: "I'm just grateful to be alive every day."

Noting that every day in jail, he was "struggling," he said: "Just every day waking up knowing that you're innocent. You wake up and here I am just locked up in a cell and crying out for help and not knowing the legal system, or having the resources or money or anything like that, but I just knew this day was going to come."