Judge orders release of teenage boy charged with murder of 4 people after the real killer confessed

A judge on Tuesday threw out the murder convictions of Davontae Sanford who pleaded guilty to killing four people at age 14, a case which a lot of people had doubted for years especially after a professional hit man stepped forward and took responsibility for the murders at a drug den.
Judge Brian Sullivan acted at the request of the Wayne County prosecutor’s office and lawyers for , Sanford who’s now 23.

Sanford was arrested and convicted for murder in the 2007 fatal shootings of four people at a Detroit house. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder at age 15, because he was trying to please the Police. But after he got arrested, he withdrew his confession but it was already too late. Since his arrest, he had been trying to undo that plea for years, especially after hit man Vincent Smothers confessed to the murders.

Vincent Smothers insists that he killed the four people in a drug house and that Sanford had no role in it.
Judge Sullivan said Sanford who is still in a prison in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, will be released on bond and all charges against him will eventually be dropped.

The agreement signed by prosecutors says the state police found major problems in the work of a Detroit police official who investigated Sanford after the four homicides.

Smothers is in prison after pleading guilty to eight other murders.