Maurice Hastings, a 69-year-old man who was wrongfully imprisoned for 38 years, has been freed after new DNA test results presented by the Los Angeles Innocence Project at #CalStateLA (@lainnocenceproject) pointed conclusively to another suspect. “I prayed for many years that this day would come,” Hastings said during a news conference Friday at the Hall of Justice in Downtown Los Angeles. “I thank the District Attorney’s Office, my attorneys and my family for standing behind me. I am just looking forward to moving forward. I am not pointing fingers; I am not standing up here a bitter man, but I just want to enjoy my life now while I have it.” No physical evidence linked Hastings to the 1983 robbery-homicide and sexual assault in Inglewood, California, for which he was arrested and convicted; and numerous alibi witnesses attested to his whereabouts during the crime. Prosecutors sought to impose the death penalty following Hastings’ guilty verdict, but the jury instead sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Biological evidence collected from the victim as part of a sexual assault kit had been preserved but never DNA tested, despite Hastings’ repeated requests dating back decades. “I have been incarcerated for over fifteen years for a murder that I did not commit,” Hastings wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office in 2000. “The most compelling of the evidence that has not as of yet been examined is the DNA evidence which will conclusively show that I was not the person involved with the deceased at the time of the crime.” Read more about Mr. Hastings and his case in the link in our bio or at news.calstatela.edu (Photos by J. Emilio Flores/Cal State LA)