Two men who had served 25 years of their life sentences were freed Wednesday after their convictions were overturned in a 2009 double homicide whose investigation was overseen by a discredited white Kansas City, Kansas, police detective. Dominique Moore, 40, said he was “thankful and blessed” after his release from a state prison in El Dorado. And cheers from a crowd of relatives greeted Cedric Warren, 34, as he walked out of jail in the county where he was convicted nearly 15 years ago in the drug-house shooting that killed two men, Charles Ford and Larry Ledoux. The case was complicated by the reputation of its lead detective, Roger Golubski, who died last week in an apparent suicide just before the start of his criminal trial over allegations that he sexually assaulted Black women, the Associated Press reports.
But the allegations facing Golubski did not enter into Wyandotte County Judge Aaron Roberts’ decision to toss Warren’s convictions on Monday and Moore’s on Wednesday. Instead, Roberts found that prosecutors failed to turn over information about the severe mental health issues of a key witness. The witness had schizophrenia, and offered a shifting account of what happened, the defense wrote in court filings. Still, one of the defendant's fathers said that Golubski had stalked two people involved with the case. Prosecutors say that, for years, Golubski preyed on female residents in poor neighborhoods, demanding sexual favors and sometimes threatening to harm or jail their relatives if they refused.
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