It has been more than 50 years since he was wrongfully convicted of murder and 40 years since he was released from prison, but it wasn't until Monday that Paul Gatling, 81, was restored all of his rights, including the right to vote.
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson vacated Gatling's 1964 murder conviction, saying in a statement that Gatling "repeatedly proclaimed his innocence even as he faced the death penalty back in the '60s. He was pressured to plead guilty and, sadly, did not receive a fair trial. Today, 52 years later, he will be given back his good name and receive justice here in Brooklyn."
In October 1964, a felon pointed to Gatling, then a 29-year-old Korean War veteran, as a suspect in the murder of artist Lawrence Rothbort. Rothbort's wife at first couldn't pick Gatling out of a lineup, but once she did, Gatling's family and lawyer told him to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. "The cops told me they would make sure I was convicted and the lawyers said they were going to execute me," he told NBC News. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
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A Legal Aid lawyer took up his case, and in one of his last acts as governor, Nelson Rockefeller commuted Gatling's sentence in 1974, allowing him to leave prison. Gatling said because his conviction was never vacated, life wasn't easy when he got out, and when he heard about the Conviction Review Unit in Brooklyn that revisits wrongful convictions, he sent in his paperwork. "People need to know what they did to me," he said. Gatling also said he would have liked to have voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, but is looking forward to casting his ballot this November.
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