Joshua Maxton, a 25-year-old Black man, was arrested for murder in the North Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati in 2015. He sat in jail for a full year without being convicted — all while maintaining his innocence and turning down plea deals.
In the middle of Joshua’s trial, defense attorneys discovered that the Cincinnati Police Department had been notified seven months earlier that key DNA evidence from the crime scene was run through a database search and matched to a different person. But the prosecution and police never disclosed this information. In fact, it only emerged by chance during a crime lab witness’s testimony. Days later, Joshua was acquitted of all charges.
Joshua Maxton. (Image: Courtesy of Joshua Maxton)
Joshua narrowly escaped a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit. But the injustice in his case led the Innocence Project to ask: How many other times did the Cincinnati Police Department obtain, but not disclose, DNA evidence that could clear someone? So we filed a lawsuit to find out.
Now, the Innocence Project, along with Cincinnati law firm Gerhardstein & Branch, has reached a settlement with the city of Cincinnati in which the city agreed to an unprecedented audit of its police department’s DNA-based homicide cases.
This marks the first time that a police department has agreed to turn over years of DNA database reports and homicide case records to a court-appointed, independent auditor to determine if what happened to Joshua has also happened to others.
This settlement is truly historic. It acknowledges that Joshua remained wrongfully incarcerated for more than seven months after police were notified of new DNA evidence that supported his longtime claim of innocence, and it establishes a novel and rigorous process to determine if this has happened to other innocent people in Cincinnati.
This is an important step forward in the Innocence Project’s work to root out police and prosecutorial misconduct and push for real, systemic change in our legal system. We’re proud to work to get justice for Joshua and anyone else who was wrongfully convicted due to police and prosecutorial misconduct.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
