Asiye Latife Yilmaz
24 September 2025•Update: 24 September 2025
ISTANBUL
The US state of California on Tuesday agreed to pay a record $25 million to settle the state’s largest wrongful conviction case, compensating a man who spent over 38 years in prison for a 1983 crime he did not commit.
Maurice Hastings, 72, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1983 sexual assault and murder of Roberta Wydermyer, who died from a single gunshot wound to the head.
Hastings was released in October 2022 after new DNA tests conclusively linked the crime to another suspect.
The August settlement stemmed from a lawsuit alleging that two Inglewood city police officers and a Los Angeles District Attorney investigator had framed Hastings.
The district attorney’s office said the coroner collected the perpetrator’s bodily fluids during a sexual assault examination at the victim’s autopsy. Hastings sought DNA testing in 2000 but was denied.
In 2021, he renewed his innocence claim, and new tests found that the semen was not his, prompting prosecutors and his lawyers to overturn his conviction in 2022, when he was 69.
Kenneth Packnett was arrested for an unrelated car theft less than three weeks after the 1983 murder, and police discovered jewelry and a coin purse that matched the victim's, but he was not investigated for the murder at the time. Packnett died in prison in 2020.
Hastings’ attorneys said the $25 million settlement is the largest wrongful conviction payout in California’s history.
"No amount of money could ever restore the 38 years of my life that were stolen from me," Hastings said. "But this settlement is a welcome end to a very long road, and I look forward to moving on with my life."
