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Viewers of the State of the Union address last week may have taken note as President Trump spoke about one particular guest in the gallery: Matthew Charles.
Charles was the first person released under the newly signed First Step Act. The bipartisan reform bill was signed into law by President Trump in December. Before then, there hadn’t been a significant change in federal sentencing laws in almost a decade.
The Davidson County District Attorney General’s office announced Friday that it will officially open a new investigation to review the case of a Nashville man who claims he’s been wrongfully incarcerated for more than a decade.
Two Tennesseans released from prison in the past year because of steps taken by the Trump administration will be guests of the president for tonight’s State of the Union address.
The Nashville District Attorney’s office has a special unit with a lofty goal: to re-open old cases, figure out if someone was wrongfully convicted, and get innocent people out of prison. But a WPLN investigation has found that two years into its creation, the Conviction Review Unit has yet to re-open a case.
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One of the first prisoners to be released under a new criminal justice reform law is Matthew Charles, a Tennessee man first profiled by WPLN in December 2017.
