Maryland Pays Millions To Man Wrongfully Convicted Of 'Memorial Day Murders'

HARFORD COUNTY, MD — After spending 32 years behind bars for a wrongful conviction in an infamous 1981 double murder, John Norman Huffington will receive $2.9 million from the state of Maryland.

Huffington, who was released a decade ago and pardoned by Gov. Larry Hogan earlier this year, was convicted twice in the May 25, 1981, killings of Diane Becker and Joseph Hudson, her boyfriend, in what became known as the “Memorial Day Murders.”

Charged when he was 18 years old, the new 60-year-old Huffington spent 10 years on death row before his sentence was commuted to two life terms. His convictions were vacated in 2013 after Huffington presented new evidence using DNA testing that was not available during his original trials, according to The Baltimore Sun.

In 2021, the Supreme Court of Maryland unanimously voted to disbar former Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly, who the court said withheld exculpatory evidence and lied about it in the following years. Citing prosecutorial misconduct, Hogan granted Huffington a full innocence pardon in January, the Sun noted.

Read more at The Baltimore Sun