Kevin Benefield's Appeal Denied in Murder of Wallingford Woman

Kevin Benefield, who was sentenced to 60 years in jail for the 1986 murder of Wallingford’s Barbara Pelkey, saw his appeal denied by a three-judge panel of the Connecticut Appellate Court on Monday, according to the New Haven Register.

Benefield argued that consent he gave authorities in 1986 to test his saliva did not give them permission in 2009 to retest the saliva using a DNA test that didn’t exist in 1986, according to the Register.

As a result of that 2009 testing, the man who was originally convicted, Kenneth Ireland, was exonerated.

Read more about Monday’s ruling at the New Haven Register here.

Ireland, who spent 21 years in prison for the 1986 rape and murder of Pelkey (a 30-year-old mother of four), was recently appointed to the state parole board by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

In July, Ireland (who was 18 at the time he was sentenced to prison) recounted those 21 years behind bars to Claims Commissioner J. Paul Vance Jr. during a compensation hearing, he is seeking up to $8 million under Connecticut’s wrongful incarceration law, and said he always believed he would die in prison before ever being exonerated.

“I was resigned I was going to die in prison, either of old age or more likely, in a violent altercation,” Ireland said, according to CTNewsJunkie.com.

Ireland was eventually exonerated after lawyers with the Connecticut Innocence Project pushed for DNA tests and he was freed in 2009 after the tests proved he wasn’t guilty and Benefield was identified as the real killer.

Image via Shutterstock

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