STILL A DEATH SENTENCE

Man jailed 30 years for crime he didn't commit dies soon after release

Postmedia News -



A Tennessee man who spent 30 years in jail for a crime he didn’t do died not long after finally being released from jail, according to reports.

Claude Garrett, 66, died in his sleep after just six months of freedom, earlier this week.

He had been released from Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in May, according to his friend Liliana Segura, as reported by the Daily Star .

“Since then, and over the past 5 months, Claude relished his freedom. He enjoyed every moment with his daughter, Deana, and especially his grandson, who he absolutely adored,” Segura wrote.

Garrett had been convicted of the 1992 murder of his girlfriend Lorie Lance, who died in a fire in their home after they had gone to a bar.

Garrett said he’d fallen asleep and tried to save Lance, who he said he woke up and tried to take to the front door. Instead, he said, she went to the back door and he went out the front and called firefighters.

As firefighters tried to get the fire under control, Claude kept telling them “I don’t understand why, I don’t understand why she didn’t follow me out the door,” according to the report.

After the fire was eventually extinguished, firefighters later found Lorie’s body in a utility room. She had died from smoke inhalation.

On Aug. 20,1993, after two and a half days of deliberations, the jury found Claude Garrett guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison because of alleged signs of arson.

Earlier this year, after years of appeals, Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins wrote that Claude had shown “actual innocence”.

The forensic finding that suggested arson was dismissed as “junk science.”