Law enforcement officials say DNA tests are refuting an eyewitness account which led to a man being wrongly accused of murder.
It seemed like a fairly simple process, after a shooting death last November in Riverside. After eyewitnesses identified one man from a photo lineup, Charles Tubbins was arrested by Buffalo Police and subsequently indicted in the shooting death of 24-year-old Rashiene Carson.
Forensic technicians took swabs from the door handle of the car the dead man was in and put them into the lab process. Weeks later, the DNA report delivered to prosecutors says it wasn't Tubbins; the charges were dropped.
"The system that we have in place in the District Attorney's office is designed to ferret out anybody who has been wrongly accused before the bad result of a wrongful conviction," said Erie County District Attorney Frank Sedita III.
"And, this is another example of that happening."
Sedita says the DNA sample was sent to a state lab and that lab identified the DNA as belonging to Ahkeem Huffman who was arrested and then indicted in the Carson murder. He is in custody awaiting trial and faces up to life in prison if convicted.
According to Sedita, 194 people have been exonerated in the last three years after his office probed arrests.
