EXCLUSIVE: Wrongfully convicted defendant David McCallum wants ‘fair opportunity’
After one full day of freedom, David McCallum looks forward to more than just settling in to life on the outside. On Wednesday, Oct. 15, after 28 years behind bars, McCallum was set free and released into the arms of his mother and other family members — all of whom waited decades for this moment.
McCallum was convicted for the 1985 robbery, kidnapping and murder of Nathan Blenner. A 16-year-old at the time of the killing, McCallum and his co-defendant William Stuckey maintained that the evidence against them was faulty from the start.
The police at the time captured confessions by McCallum and Stuckey on video, but the defendants asserted that they were beaten prior to their admissions and that they were told what to say by the investigating officers. Brooklyn’s new district attorney, Kenneth Thompson, agreed that the confessions “were false in large part because these 16-year-olds were fed false facts.”
The world has changed since McCallum was last a free man. In 1986, the Soviet Union was still considered a world power, Ronald Reagan was president and cellular phones were new technology used only for making telephone calls. McCallum now prepares for a 2014 world where Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president, you can pause and rewind live TV and cell phones are closer to mobile computers than mere talking devices.