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Jonathan Fleming told police he was at Disney World when his friend was sh0t and k*lled in Brooklyn. He was telling the truth. And the evidence was in his pocket when they arrested him. Darryl Rush, known to friends as “Black,” was shot and k*lled in Brooklyn in the early hours of August 15, 1989. Fleming said he was in Orlando, Florida, on a Disney World trip with his mother, Patricia—roughly 1,100 miles away. From the beginning, Fleming maintained that he was innocent. He had plane tickets, postcards and video from the trip. But a woman identified him as the sh**ter. In 1990, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life. Before he was even sentenced, the woman recanted. She admitted that she had lied, saying she hoped her testimony would persuade police to drop an unrelated arrest against her. Prosecutors argued that her original testimony was truthful, and Fleming’s conviction remained in place. His appeals failed. Then, in 2013, his lawyers asked the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to review the case. The Conviction Integrity Unit examined the old files and uncovered evidence that should have raised serious questions from the beginning. Among the documents was a receipt from an Orlando hotel showing that Fleming had paid a telephone bill there about five hours before the mu*der. The receipt had been taken from his pocket when police arrested him. There was also a 1989 letter from Orlando police to New York detectives. It said hotel employees remembered seeing Fleming in Orlando. His defence had never been given that information. Investigators also found police records indicating that the witness had received a reward connected to her testimony. On April 8, 2014, prosecutors and defence lawyers stood together before a Brooklyn judge and jointly asked for Fleming’s conviction to be overturned. After nearly 25 years behind bars, Fleming walked free that same day. He was 51 years old. In June 2015, New York City agreed to pay him $6.25 million. For almost a quarter of a century, Jonathan Fleming had insisted he was telling the truth. The evidence supporting his alibi had been in the police files all along. He lost 25 years of his life—but he never stopped saying he was innocent.