As teenagers, three boys in Baltimore sentenced to life imprisonment for a killing. After 36 years in prison dismissed the.

Three men have been released after wrongly serving 36 years behind bars in Baltimore in the us state of Maryland.

Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart and Ransom Watkins were as teenagers in 1984 sentenced to life imprisonment for having shot and killed a 14-year-old boy.

A judge has the night of Wednesday local time acquitted the three of the killing, and they have been released.

the Killing happened in 1983 at Harlem Park Junior High School, where the 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett was shot in the neck and had stolen his jacket.

It was the first skuddrab on a student at a public school in Baltimore, which at that time received much attention in the press.

- These three men were convicted as children due to police and prosecutorial misconduct, says Marilyn Mosby, who is the state prosecutor in Baltimore.

- Betist What the state and the prosecutor general's office has done to them is wrong. They deserve much more than an excuse. We owe them a real compensation, and I will fight to make sure that they get it.

In a communication from the statsanklagerens office, it appears that "investigators went after the three men, who were all 16-year-old black boys, by instructing and forcing other teenagers to witness against them".

the Organization of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project (MAIP) has long worked to release the three unjustly convicted.

According to the organization built the case against the three men on the testimony of a total of four teens, who all later withdrew their testimony.

the Witnesses said initially, that the crime was committed by one person, but ended after pressure from police to identify the three teenagers as the perpetrators.

Alfred Chestnut was after the killing seen wearing a jacket that looked like it, as the 14-year-old victim was frastjålet. But his mother could present a receipt for the jacket.

After the acquittal has Ransom Watkins in a message lamented that the three were ever imprisoned.

- Someone must pay for this. It can't just end like that. The fight is not over, he says.

/ritzau/AFP