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The City of Inglewood has agreed to pay $25 million to a 72-year-old man who spent nearly four decades in prison for a crime that he did not commit, making it what "appears to be California's largest-ever wrongful conviction settlement," attorneys said.
Maurice Hastings was convicted of the 1983 kidnapping and murder of an Inglewood woman and the attempted murder of both her husband and his friend.
After 38 years in prison, new DNA evidence exonerated and freed him in 2022 and led to the identification of a different suspect. Hastings was declared factually innocent by a California superior court in 2023.
Maurice Hastings, who spent more than 38 years behind bars for a 1983 murder he didn't commit, is applauded while appearing in court in Los Angeles, where a judge officially found him to be factually innocent on March 1, 2023.
J. Emilio Flores/Cal State LA News Service via AP, Pool
Back in 1983, Roberta Wydermyer is said to have taken a late-night trip to a market in Inglewood but never returned home. Her husband and friend went out to look for her and located her car, which had been stolen. As they followed Roberta's stolen car, the suspect shot at them, wounding her husband, Billy Ray Wydermyer.
Police say that the suspect robbed Roberta, sexually assaulted her and then shot her in the back of the head before hiding her in the trunk of her car, which he stole.
Hastings' first trial ended in a hung jury, but a second trial found him guilty of the crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Attorneys with the law firm Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger said that the 2023 federal civil rights lawsuit demonstrated that a detective with the Inglewood Police Department "falsified evidence of Hastings's guilt and buried evidence corroborating his alibi, single-handedly framing an innocent man."
Attorneys called it "policing at its worst," as weeks after Roberta's murder, the man whose DNA ultimately linked him to the crime was in police custody for car theft and had jewelry and a coin purse that matched what the victim had on her when she was murdered. That suspect, Kenneth Packnett, also had the same type of gun on him that was used to shoot the victims, attorneys said.
Packnett was never investigated by police for the crimes. DNA evidence and corroborating testimony from his ex-girlfriend later proved that Packnett was the sole perpetrator of the 1983 crimes.
Pcknett died in 2020, when he was serving time in prison for a separate case of kidnapping and rape.
"Police departments throughout California and across the country should take notice that there is a steep price to pay for allowing such egregious misconduct on their watch," said NSBHF partner Nick Brustin.
Hastings said in a statement through his attorneys that no amount of money could restore the 38 years that were stolen from him.
"But this settlement is a welcome end to a very long road, and I look forward to moving on with my life," Hastings said. "I thank God that I've made it to the other side of this decades-long ordeal, and I thank my family and legal team for their steadfast support over the years."
Hastings' conviction for abduction, sexual assault, murder and attempted murder was vacated due to a joint effort from the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office and the Los Angeles Innocence Project.
Julie Sharp is a digital producer at CBS Los Angeles. She is a South Bay native and majored in print journalism at Cal State University Long Beach. Julie previously reported for the Beach Reporter, contributed to the Palos Verdes Pulse and worked as a video journalist for CBS News before joining the CBS News Los Angeles website team.
