Hawaii Innocence Project Representative

In Hawaii, we have a law where you can be compensated for every year you spent in prison if you were wrongfully convicted. Ian has yet to collect that, and he's been out now for 10 months, 9 months. And as far as I know, no one has been able to collect on that since the law was passed. And the problem is you need to be declared innocent.

So not just not guilty, not just withdrawal of your plea agreement, or... vacating the conviction, you need to be declared innocent. We'll see if that gets done here with the Schweitzer's.

The Hawaii Innocence Project learned in February the lab identified a possible suspect. Police and the FBI started surveillance. The man was seen discarding a fork in public, and that fork was sent to the lab for more testing. On July 3rd, results confirmed a match. On July 19th, Hawaii police officers with a search warrant got a cheek swab from the man.

Days later, last Tuesday, the man was found dead in his home, an apparent suicide. The next day, the DNA results from the cheek swab returned showing a positive match.