Renay Lynch Exonerated After 26 years On Wrongful Conviction

Photos: Facebook\Innocence Project Nearly 26 years after she was wrongfully convicted for the 1995 murder and robbery of her landlord, Renay Lynch was finally exonerated Friday in Buffalo, NY. A post-conviction re-examination of crime scene fingerprint evidence — which law enforcement had previously withheld from the defense — pointed to another tenant of the victim as the likely perpetrator of the crime.​​​​ Renay was released in Jan. 2022 and now becomes the 250th person to be freed by the Innocence Project. On May 19, 1995, a local landlord in Amherst, NY was found stabbed to death in her apartment. Initially, the investigation focused specifically on people who were known to have disputes with the landlord over property and money. But after 18 months, the murder was still unsolved. Police began talking to Renay who was a tenant of the victim, and they initially viewed her as an informant who might help them break open the case. In late 1996, they narrowed their focus to a man named Kareem Walker, who Renay knew. She was helping them gather information around him, but as their efforts continued to fail, eventually police told Renay that in order to arrest Kareem, they “needed [her]...