A Cuyahoga County judge just wiped a murder conviction nearly two decades old, granting a new trial to Roberto Wynn — found guilty in 2009 of shooting 22-year-old Christopher Basie in the head — and leaving the family of a dead man to wonder whether any conviction in this country is ever final.
Judge Jeffrey Saffold granted Wynn's motion Tuesday after the chief witness from the original trial recanted her testimony last month, court records show. The Ohio Innocence Project, which now represents Wynn, said the recantation plus additional evidence warranted a new trial. Saffold scheduled a bond hearing for Thursday to decide whether Wynn walks free while the case grinds on.
Basie was shot on April 25, 2008, near East 123rd Street and Tuscora Avenue in Cleveland and pronounced dead at Huron Road Hospital. Wynn caught 30 years to life and wasn't eligible for parole until 2038. Now a recanted statement could undo all of it.
Neither outlet reported on Saffold's background or who appointed him — the kind of basic fact the public deserves when a judge overturns a murder conviction from the bench. Dissenter will follow up.
The Cleveland case lands the same week a Cook County judge in Chicago reversed the murder conviction of Abdul Malik Muhammad on stronger constitutional grounds. Judge Nicholas Kantas found that prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence at Muhammad's 2001 trial — specifically, lineup results where witnesses failed to identify Muhammad as the shooter. According to the Chicago Tribune, one witness who didn't pick Muhammad was told by officers he chose the "wrong person," then was never called at trial and the defense was never told. Muhammad spent 26 years in prison.
That is a Brady violation — the kind of prosecutorial misconduct that should outrage anyone who believes in due process. Muhammad's case also involves credible torture allegations against a Chicago detective who worked under notorious Cmdr. Jon Burge, according to the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission. When the state buries evidence and police coerce witnesses, the system isn't working.
But the Wynn case in Cleveland rests on thinner ground: a recanted testimony after 18 years. Courts have long treated recantations with skepticism — witnesses can be pressured, memories reshape, and the passage of time makes the original trial harder to reconstruct. The Ohio Innocence Project cited "other evidence developed in the case" but offered no specifics.
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office has not yet commented. The Ohio Innocence Project declined further detail.
The tension cuts both ways. Prosecutors who bury exculpatory evidence deserve the full weight of the law — and the Chicago case appears to have that in spades. But a recanted witness alone, years after a young man was buried, puts victims' families through hell twice and tells every cop and prosecutor that even a clean conviction can be dismantled on a word. Whether Wynn's case has more than that remains to be seen.
