Jailhouse informants convicted a man of murder. He spent four decades trying to prove his innocence
Jailhouse informants convicted a man of murder. He spent four decades trying to prove his innocence
A Pennsylvania man who has served 43 years of a life sentence for murder is still pursuing appeals. Steve Szarewicz insists he didn't do it, but so far his claim hasn't persuaded the courts.
The four men who put Steve Szarewicz away for murder all changed their stories at one time or another, yet Szarewicz still sits behind bars. That’s where he has been for almost 43 years.
A jury convicted him of killing Billy Merriwether, 25, who was shot twice in the back of the head and once in the chest, his body left facedown off a country road in western Pennsylvania on a rainy February morning in 1981.
There were no fingerprints, no eyewitness testimony and no DNA evidence linking Szarewicz to the scene. Investigators never found the murder weapons. Instead, the case rested on the words of four jailhouse informants who all testified that Szarewicz confessed to them.
Wow it's almost like the jailhouse informant schtick is coercive
This is such a farce that I hear about all the time in the true crime podcasts I listen to. Prosecutors find themselves with a case that has no direct evidence pointing to their guy and 9 times out of 10 they pull a jailhouse informant out of the woodwork at the 11th hour claiming that their guy confessed (to a complete stranger) every little detail of their crime.
Meanwhile whenever someone who may have any sort of criminal record comes on the stand to defend the defendent, prosecutors claim they can't possibly be trustworthy because they have a record.
It's a clear "heads I win, tails you lose" situation in the courtroom most of the time.