Let's explore another case, where we have Ryan Ferguson, from Jefferson City, Missouri. Ferguson is accused of killing a popular sports editor, Kent Heitholt, from Columbia Daily Tribune, on Halloween night in 2001. Ferguson has been in prison now for eight years. The accuser is Charles Erickson, who claims that he and Ferguson agreed to rob someone for money to help them buy more alcohol. Erickson went in to the police station two years after the murder and gave the police suspicion that he knew some of what happened the night Heitholt was killed. In March of 2004 both were arrested and charged with murder. Erickson took a plea of 25 years in prison and agreed to testify against Ferguson. None of the physical evidence ties Ferguson or Erickson to …show more content…
Once the janitors made their eyewitness testimony Ferguson was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Ferguson's Father wrote in a ton of plea letters pointing out the lack of evidence, all were denied. In 2009, he caught a break, when Cathleen Zelner just over Ferguson case on his behalf to try and get justice for him. Ferguson received a letter from Erickson taking all of the blame for the crime. In the letter he explained that, he lied and said that he was the one that committed the crime and that Ferguson tried to stop him. Erickson tells a reporter in 2012 that he lied because he could not remember anything from that night. Erickson went through an interrogation with open ended questions, that were soon answered for him that he also repeated in court against Ferguson in 2004. Erickson was scared and intimidated during his interrogation. He knew that he was in trouble and had to blame someone. Now in a appeal trial for Ryan Ferguson 2012, Erickson testify that he was lying about the incident and wants Ferguson to be set free from serving prison time for a crime he did not