A man serving four life sentences for his role in a shooting that killed a teenage girl will walk free next year after a Miami-Dade judge threw out his conviction Wednesday, citing missteps by prosecutors who relied on a longtime jail informant to make their case.
The new sentence for Taji Pearson, the wheel man in the fatal, 2010 shooting of 15-year-old Sabrina O'Neil, followed the discovery of evidence withheld for years from the defense.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez said she struggled with the decision to reduce Pearson's sentence to 15 years in a case where an innocent eighth-grader died in a botched episode of gang warfare.
But state prosecutors told the judge Wednesday that key evidence had never been turned over to defense attorneys in the 11 years since Pearson's arrest.
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