Stephen Patterson declared innocent in '05 killing after nearly 20 years behind bars

LOS ANGELES - A man who spent about 18 years behind bars was declared factually innocent and ordered to be released from custody Wednesday after his murder conviction was overturned for a 16-year-old boy's killing in South Los Angeles in 2005.

Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan granted a joint petition from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and Michael Semanchik, executive director of The Innocence Center, that requested that Stephen Patterson's conviction and 50-year-to-life sentence be set aside and that a factual innocence finding be made.

The petition cited an investigation by the District Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit that "identified the true perpetrators of the shooting."

"You have been exonerated, Mr. Patterson," the judge said, with much of the audience bursting into applause in the packed downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

Shortly after being released from custody, Patterson told reporters, "This was a long time coming ... My life was given back to me."

He said he looks forward to spending time with his family, including his mother, who hired a private investigator to look into the case after her son's conviction.

Patterson was convicted in 2007 of first-degree murder and gun allegations in connection with the April 15, 2005, shooting of Yair Oliva as the teen stood in front of an apartment complex near the corner of 68th Street and Parmalee Avenue after a verbal dispute between Oliva and several others and a man believed to be a gang member, according to the petition.

He was sentenced in 2008 to 50 years to life in state prison.

Patterson — who was arrested in 2006 — denied knowing anything about the killing and told detectives he was home when the shooting occurred and that he came out of his house after he heard police in the area, attorneys wrote in the petition.

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The "sole eyewitness identification" of Patterson made about two months after the crime "appears unreliable in retrospect," and there was no physical evidence presented at trial connecting him to the shooting, according to the petition.

The attorneys also noted in the petition that numerous witnesses interviewed after Patterson's conviction — including one of the two men who had been standing with the victim at the time of the shooting — said that Patterson was not involved in the shooting, and many of the witnesses had seen the perpetrators fleeing the area at the same time they saw Patterson standing in his front yard.

Semanchik said after the hearing that evidence existed that would have spared his client from doing 18 years behind bars and lauded the district attorney and the office's Conviction Integrity Unit for investigating and realizing that "Stephen was wrongfully convicted" and that the evidence pointed in another direction to "the two true suspects."

District Attorney George Gascón told reporters shortly after Patterson's release that he wanted to extend his sympathy to the victim's family, vowing that the office will work to try to ensure that those who are accountable for the teen's killing will face justice. He noted that there is an ongoing investigation to make sure that those involved in the slaying are held accountable.

The exoneration is the 13th under Gascón's administration.