Four men have officially been exonerated decades after their arrests in the infamous 1991 yogurt shop quadruple killings in Austin, Texas, and months after police announced that the killer had been identified.
The exonerated men — Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, Maurice Pierce, and Forest Welborn — were “normal teenage boys” at the time of the murders and “their entire youth and futures were taken away from them,” a defense attorney said at Thursday’s emotional hearing.
“It is truly a miracle that we are here. A miracle that has come too late for Maurice Pierce and has been denied too long,” the attorney said. Pierce died in 2010, according to The Associated Press.
Scott said in court that his daughter was 3 and he’d been married for 1 year when he was arrested in 1999.
“I lost the chance to build a life with my family. When I was finally released, the relationship I once had with my wife just wasn’t there, that ultimately led to our divorce,” he said. “For decades, I have carried the burden of wrongful conviction. Every day I have carried the weight of a crime that I did not commit. No court ruling can return the years and love that were taken from me, but it can acknowledge the truth.”
In 1991, Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas and Amy Ayers were attacked in a yogurt shop and all shot in the head, according to Austin police. The girls were left nude and tied up, and there was evidence of sexual assault, police said. The building was set on fire before the killer fled the scene, police said.
No physical evidence ever linked the four men to the yogurt shop, police said.
But in 1999, the four men were arrested, with Springsteen and Scott confessing and later recanting, according to the AP.
Springsteen and Scott were convicted of capital murder. The convictions were later overturned on appeals due to constitutional errors, and before they could be retried, prosecutors said advanced DNA analysis pointed to another person, and both men were ordered freed in 2009, according to the AP.
Pierce was in jail for three years before the charges were dismissed and Welborn was charged but never went on trial, the AP said.
Springsteen said his life “turned into chaos and uncertainty” when he was arrested.
“After being released in 2009, I have been persecuted every single day … being seen as a monster for something I did not do,” he said in a statement read in court on his behalf.
“I have suffered 27 years of persecution, repeated harassment and trying to exist and survive in this world. … Ten of those 27 years being in prison on death row, kept in solitary confinement, with only one hour a day to be out of my cell,” he said.
Welborn, who was 15 at the time of the murders, said in a statement read by his attorney that he “lost the opportunity to have a relationship or start a family of my own.”
He said it’s been hard to maintain jobs and a social life and said he’s experienced homelessness.
Pierce’s wife said in court, “Maurice never deserved any of this. He deserved life, dignity, and justice. He deserved his innocence. I am truly sorry this horrific crime happened. … I am grateful the case is finally solved … but unfortunately, he did not live to see it.”
Judge Dayna Blazey concluded the hearing by saying, “No ruling can restore the time taken from you. No judgment can fully remedy the burden that you have carried, but the court can, and does, state without qualification or hesitation that you are cleared and that your innocence is affirmed.”
Last year, Austin police detective Daniel Jackson announced that DNA technology helped them identify the girls’ killer as Robert Eugene Brashers, who died in 1999.
Before the yogurt shop murders, Brashers served time in prison for shooting a woman and he was granted parole in 1989, Jackson said.
DNA linked Brashers to multiple “unsolved murders and sexual assaults across the country,” Jackson said. “He’s good for sexual assaults and murders throughout the ’90s that he never had to stand trial for.”
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