Michael Austin: Free at last

by Jeff Falcon

After spending half his life in prison for a murder he did not commit, Michael Austin’s conviction was overturned at the end of December. A Baltimore City Circuit Court judge found that his trial was "seriously plagued" by multiple problems. The judge added that no reasonable juror armed with the facts known today would have convicted Austin. Nonetheless, it took the states attorney another week before she finally decided not to retry the case.

In 1974, Austin was convicted of killing a security guard at the Crown Food Market in East Baltimore. The arrest was based on faulty identification by a store clerk. The store clerk originally described the shooter as a light-skinned black man, about 5'8" and 150 pounds. Austin was 6'5", dark skinned and 200 pounds. Nonetheless, the clerk pointed Austin out in court. In fact, he was the main witness in the case. The prosecutor introduced him as an “upstanding college student,” when, in fact, he was a drug dealer who had a lengthy criminal record.

The store clerk (shop assistant), Jackie Robinson, who identified Austin at trial, had changed his initial description of the shooter after police charged him in another case. Robinson's family later said Jackie was not a civic-minded college student as prosecutors told jurors, but a drug dealer. Following Robinson's death by heroin overdose in 1997, his brother came forward and said that Jackie had confessed to him that he sent an innocent man to prison. Another eyewitness, the store's assistant manager, was not called at trial, but had given a physical description that did not fit Austin. Austin also clocked out of his factory job at 4:53 pm, 27 minutes before the murder, and given the distance from his job to the store, could not have committed the murder.

Austin's lawyer, who was not given the case until the actual day of trial, never submitted crucial evidence – a time-card and statement from Austin's employer, which would have supported his testimony that he was at work the day of the killing. The judge, who issued faulty instructions to the jury, sentenced Austin to life in prison.

Austin was 25 when he was accused in the April 29, 1974, murder of Roy Kellam, a security guard at a Baltimore grocery. Eyewitnesses described a killer who had lighter complexion and was 7 inches shorter, but Austin was convicted on March 27, 1975, after a trial that was later judged to have been plagued by faulty use of evidence and incompetent representation.

In 1994, Austin took Rahman's advice and sent a letter to Centurion, a New Jersey-based nonprofit that helps prisoners it believes are innocent.

Centurion has three criteria for taking a case: The facts of the case have to point overwhelmingly to evidence of wrongful imprisonment, the inmate must be poor and out of appeals, and it must be likely that he would lead a productive life and not get in trouble again if released.

"Right away, this case stood out," said James McCloskey, Centurion's executive director. Austin's case easily met the first two criteria, he said, and the discipline that Austin displayed in earning his general equivalency diploma and learning to read and play music indicated that he was a good risk for the third.

After interviewing potential lawyers, Centurion tapped Nathans, who said his firm consequently spent "hundreds of hours on the case."

"The system is not friendly to reopening these matters," Nathans said, noting initial opposition to looking into the case.

But the case was eventually reopened and Austin was freed. Since then, McCloskey said, Austin "has been a model."

"We wish all the people we freed were Michael Austins," McCloskey said.

On Nov. 17 2004, the state Board of Public Works awarded Austin $1.4 million, the largest amount ever given an exonerated prisoner in Maryland.

Austin plans to use the money to buy a house and invest. But Austin, who also plays at jazz bars in the area in addition to speaking engagements, said this week that he might use some of the state money to market a demo compact disc of his music and try to get a recording contract.

Descending a flight of stairs into the basement of a Baltimore house he shares with Rahman, Austin walks past walls lined with pictures of Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday, and approaches a keyboard cluttered with sheet music.

"This is my joy," he says, gliding his long fingers over the ivory keys, leaning toward a microphone and softly crooning the words to "My Funny Valentine."

He reaches into a cabinet and pulls out a copy of a CD with three tracks that he composed himself.

"They're sort of a mix between (rhythm and blues) and jazz," he says. He acknowledges that the market would be hard to break into. "But after what I've been through, I don't think that anything is impossible."

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