ALBANY – The elements common to many wrongful convictions—young defendants, false confession, mistaken eyewitness identification—converged in a Bronx case and forced two women to spend seven years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.
Yet, Latisha Johnson and Malisha Blyden, who were sentenced to 40 years in prison for attempted murder, had the benefit of doggedly persistent attorneys and the luck to have the Bronx district attorney’s office willing to consider that maybe, just maybe, the prosecution got it wrong back in 2007.
