C-Murder has been sitting behind bars for years in relation to a fatal shooting that he insists wasn’t his doing, yet a federal court official has now reportedly retained the rapper’s original conviction and denied his release.
via: Vibe
On Wednesday (Nov. 29), The Source reported that U.S. District Judge Sarah S. Vance has rejected C-Murder’s habeas petition. The rapper, Corey Miller, and his attorney looked to overturn the 2009 conviction finding him guilty of shooting and killing Steve Thomas. Thomas, 16, was at New Orleans’ Platinum Club when he was murdered.
There were two witnesses to the killing, Darnell and Kenneth Jordan, who offered a testimony to the incident. They recalled seeing the No Limit artist take Thomas’ life at the nightclub. C-Murder would then be sentenced to life in prison in 2009.
However, in 2018, the two men recanted their testimonies and claimed that law enforcement coerced them into lying to convict Miller. On Nov. 13, Judge Vance addressed Darnell and Kenneth Jordan’s recantations. She stated that their retracted statements were “suspect and not reliable.”
“The state trial court found contradictions and falsities in both Darnell’s and Kenneth’s affidavits which led the court to conclude that the affidavits were not credible and unreliable to serve as proof,” the judges’s decision reads.
According to The FADER, Miller’s attorney, Jane Hogan, released a statement to the outlet. She appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit court and asserted that she remained “optimistic” that he would have his chance at innocence.
“While I am disappointed that Mr. Miller has, yet again, been denied a day in court, this ruling will be appealed. Mr. Miller also has a pending state court petition alleging factual innocence and I am optimistic that at some point, he will be granted a hearing on his substantial claim of innocence.”
Corey Miller’s alleged murder victim’s brother recently broke his silence on Kim Kardashian fighting for his freedom. George Thomas, Steve Thomas’s brother, appeared on the BOSS TALK 101 podcast in September. During the interview, he called Kardashian’s defense of the rapper a “slap in the face.”
“It’s a high-profile case, so you jumped on a case without reading all of the facts,” Thomas said. “Had you done the research, you would say: ‘Hey, I’m not getting in this case.’ And then my family can’t properly mourn because every year — whether it’s BET, whether it’s something on YouTube, where there’s something else coming forward — it’s always he’s innocent, he was railroaded.”
