California man may walk free next week after 36 years in prison for 1978 murder

A California man who spent 36 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder could be free after a court hearing next week, prosecutors said.

Back in 1980, Michael Ray Hanline was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1978 shooting death of a biker named J.T. McGarry.

But new DNA testing of evidence collected from the scene does not match the now 68-year-old man’s or that of his alleged partner in crime, according to prosecutors.

“The DNA testing performed this year was not available at the time of the trial,” Alex Simpson, associate director of the California Innocence Project (CIP) told Yahoo News.

“It probably would not have been available as recently as five years ago, but in recent years the technology has gotten so sophisticated.”

The Ventura County district attorney’s office said that investigations by its Conviction Integrity Unit and Bureau of Investigation — as well as CIP — cast doubt on the jury’s decision.

Simpson, who has been working on the case for a decade, explained that the jury’s verdict was reversed on Nov. 13 based on the testing and the discovery of police reports that had been covered up.

The district attorney’s office said in a statement that these documents “would have been helpful to the defense and should have been disclosed to defense counsel at the time of trail.”

But they were concealed “under the guise of protecting an anonymous informant,” according to CIP.

These documents reportedly implicated others in the murder — notably the prosecution’s key witnesses.

At the time, defense attorney Bruce Robertson, who has since died, had represented many of his witnesses in other cases and directed the investigation toward Hanline, according to the nonprofit dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted inmates.

Hanline has maintained his innocence ever since McGarry’s body with several bullet wounds was found on the side of a road roughly 25 miles from his home in Ventura County. He contacted CIP when it started reviewing cases, over two decades after his conviction.

Now he's processing the thought of walking free after a court hearing on Monday.

“This has been a long time coming,” Simpson said. “For Mr. Hanline, I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. He’s still in shock.”

The organization estimates that Hanline’s incarceration has cost taxpayers about $1.8 million.

Simpson says wrongfully convicted people in California are generally entitled to some compensation for their time behind bars — typically $100 a day.

But he thinks it is premature to start asking whether recompense is on the horizon.

“Right now, we are just working on getting him released so he can go home to his family," he said.