14-Year-Old Conviction Vacated

A Louisville man's 14-year-old manslaughter conviction has been vacated after it was determined he did not commit the crime.Edwin Chandler was arrested in 1993 for murder and robbery in a Louisville convenience store holdup. He was convicted of manslaughter in 1995.After exhausting his appeals, Chandler took his case to the Kentucky Innocence Project, which used forensic evidence to show that Chandler's fingerprints and hair were not found at the crime scene. Chandler had confessed to the crime, but Innocence Project Director Marguerite Thomas says it was forced."The detective used extremely coercive measures in securing the confession," says Thomas. "He lied to him, he said that his fingerprints actually were on the beer bottle, which was not true. He told him he had flunked a polygraph, which, in total, was not true."Another man was indicted for the crime Tuesday morning. Chandler was released on parole in 2002. He says he's glad to be found innocent and doesn't harbor a grudge over his imprisonment."Me being overly upset in this wasn't going to help me, so I had to follow a different pattern for myself," he says. "That I didn't show anything that would make me be this guy, because I'm not."Thomas says she hopes Chandler's record will be expunged soon.