Man says Detroit police framed him for murder in 1992, freed from prison after new tests

(WJBK) - A man imprisoned for 25 years who accused Detroit police of framing him with phony evidence is being released after new tests show that the gun and bullets did not match.

The Associated Press reports 51-year-old Desmond Ricks is getting out of prison after his murder conviction was overturned Friday.

In 1992, Ricks was with a man named Gary Bennett outside a burger restaurant in Detroit, when Bennett was shot in the head. Ricks says he dodged gunfire and ran away. Police accused him of the crime and seized his mother's gun.

The Innocence Clinic at University of Michigan law school asked prosecutors for photos of bullets removed from Bennett. After taking a closer look and determining things weren't adding up, they convinced a judge to reopen the case.

Pictures showed that the bullets removed from the victim were in bad shape, and didn't look like the bullets Detroit police presented as evidence in court back in 1992.

Police argued back then that the murder weapon was Ricks' mother's firearm. The clinic discovered of the two bullets, one didn't match the alleged gun and the other was too mangled to be analyzed.

Judge Richard Skutt of the 3rd Circuit Court in Wayne County overturned the murder conviction, making Ricks a free man Friday.

Since 2009, the University of Michigan law school has exonerated at least 10 people and freed four.

They work to uncover poor police work, the AP reports, by interviewing new witnesses and talking to specialists.

"I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had nothing to do with this," Ricks told The Associated Press in an earlier interview. "They switched the bullets on me."

FOX 2 is reaching out to the Detroit Police Department for comment. Stay with us for more information on this story.