A man who spent nearly three decades behind bars after being convicted of a 1993 murder in East Los Angeles was declared Friday to be factually innocent of the crime.
Last October, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge H. Clay Jacke II had vacated Humberto “Beto” Duran’s conviction and potential life prison sentence for the Dec. 18, 1993, killing of Albert Gonzalez.
Prosecutors noted then in a court document that the only percipient witness to the killing has repeatedly recanted her testimony during the trial that he was one of the two gunmen. The document cited “ineffective assistance of trial counsel and new evidence of actual innocence.”…