The Board of Commissioners of Oakland County Michigan is the latest to go on public record supporting Temujin Kensu, who was wrongfully convicted and has spent three and a half decades in prison. (See attached resolution).
The bipartisan resolution, passed unanimously on September 14, 2021 by the Oakland Board, states that Kensu remains behind bars despite lack of any physical evidence linking him to the murder as well as an iron clad alibi showing that, at the time of the murder, he was hundreds of miles away. The resolution goes on to support the effort of the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) of the Attorney General to examine and evaluate the conviction.
"Passing this resolution was absolutely the right thing to do", said Oakland County Commissioner Robert Hoffman. "I would rather see 100 guilty go free than convict one innocent person. This case, on the surface, appears to be a tragic miscarriage of justice. If the strong don't stand up to protect the wrongly convicted, who will?" Commissioners Charles Gavell and Eileen Kowal joined Hoffman in sponsoring the
resolution.
The CIU is now thoroughly examining Kensu's conviction and observers familiar with the case believe that body will conclude Kensu could not have committed the murder. The CIU reviews claims of actual innocence to determine whether there is convincing evidence the jury did not hear that the convicted defendant was not the person who committed the offense.
"You have to think that a determination of innocence is inevitable", said David Sanders with Proving Innocence. "There is overwhelming evidence he was in Escanaba at the time of the murder and that St. Clair County Prosecutor Robert Cleland's office used questionable and unethical means to convict the guy." St. Clair County's misconduct in Kensu's case was confirmed in 201 0 when Denise Page
Hood, the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court, Eastern District, ruled that there was misconduct in Kensu's trial when the prosecution solicited perjured testimony from a jailhouse informant. Hood's ruling was overturned on procedural grounds (tardy filing) having nothing to do with Kensu's actual innocence.
Temujin Kensu's (aka., Fredrick Freeman}, case is known as "Michigan's Shame" for the length of his incarceration and the serious prosecutorial abuse that led to a false
conviction. He was sentenced to mandatory life in prison for the murder of Scott Macklem in a St. Clair County Community College Parking lot in 1986. Kensu has multiple unimpeached witnesses proving he was in the Escanaba area about 450 miles away when the murder occurred in Port Huron. There was absolutely no evidence that connected Kensu to the killing. No murder weapon was produced. No gunshot residue was found on his clothing. An ammunition box found at the scene contained a fingerprint not belonging to Kensu. Kensu and his primary alibi witness both passed polygraphs administered by a respected former Michigan State Police polygraph examiner.
For more information on this case see: https://www.provinginnocence.org/temujin-kensu.
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