LOS ANGELES—A man who spent 38 years behind bars for the 1983 abduction and murder of a woman in Inglewood was declared factually innocent Mar. 2 of the crime.
Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan noted that the request for a finding of factual innocence for Maurice Hastings came in a motion jointly filed by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles Innocence Project.
“… I find him factually innocent,” the judge said during the brief hearing in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.
Hastings, 69, was released from custody last October after his conviction was vacated for the abduction, sexual assault, and slaying of 30-year-old Roberta Wydermyer, along with the attempted murder of Wydermyer’s husband, Billy Ray, and his friend, George Pinson….