NEW YORK (AP) – After 25 years of trying to clear himself in a notorious tourist killing, Johnny Hincapie walked out of a courthouse Tuesday, his conviction overturned and his resolve intact.
He faces the possibility of prosecutors appealing the decision or retrying him in the 1990 killing of Utah tourist Brian Watkins, who was stabbed to death in a subway station as he defended his parents during a mugging that helped crystallize an era of crime and fear in the nation’s biggest city.
But “I’ll deal with that tomorrow. Right now, I just want to take one step at a time,” Hincapie said after emerging, tears streaming down his cheeks, to hugs and cheers from relatives who hadn’t seen him outside a jail or prison in a quarter-century. “I feel wonderful. I feel free!”
“It’s sad that it took 25 years for the truth to uncover itself,” he said. “But I thank God that now, I can start to put all of this behind me.”
Hincapie says he was a bystander wrongfully swept up in the case and then was coerced into a false confession. Prosecutors said his claims aren’t credible.