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Wrongly Convicted Database Record
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Charge: |
Murder |
Sentence: |
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Years Imprisoned: |
2.92 |
Year Crime: |
1984 |
Year Convicted: |
2010 |
Year Cleared: |
2012 |
U.S. State or Country of Crime: |
Wyoming |
County or Region of Crime: |
Sublette |
City of Crime: |
Bondurant |
Result: |
Judicially Exonerated Released |
Summary of Case: |
"Troy Dean Willoughby was wrongly convicted on January 29, 2010 of first-degree murder in the June 21, 1984 murder of 25-year-old Elizabeth “Lisa” Ehlers near Bondurant in Sublette County, Wyoming. Ms. Ehlers' body was found next to her car parked at a turnout on Highway 191 south of Jackson. Troy Willoughby was 20 at the time of her death. Twenty-five years after the murder, Willoughby was arrested on March 1, 2009 in Montana where he was living, and extradicted to Wyoming, where he remained in jail until his 2010 trial. During his trial the prosecution relied on Willoughby's statement that he saw Ms. Ehler's car at the turnout -- that he recanted as false, a jailhouse informants testimony that Willoughby confessed to him, and the testimony of his ex-wife Rosa Hosking and a former friend Tim Bayse that they were with Willoughby at a party in Jackson that Ms. Ehler's also attended, and that after the party they were with Willoughby when they came upon Ms. Ehlers at the turnout where he killed her. Willoughby's alibi defense was that he was at work on an oil rig at the time the medical testimony established she had died about 6 am. Following his conviction by a jury Willoughby was sentenced to life in prison. After Willoughby's conviction and sentence were affirmed by the Wyoming Supreme Court on June 8, 2011, his trial attorney's were provided with 1984 Sublette County Sheriff's Office reports about the murder that included evidence that at the time the two witnesses claimed they were at the party in Jackson, Willoughby and his wife were being questioned more than 65 miles away by police in Daniel, Wyoming where Willoughby lived, about a rock-throwing incident following a dispute with three people at a bar in Pinedale, Wyoming earlier that evening. The police report included the names of the three people at the bar in Pinedale that is 13 miles east of Daniel. They were questioned at the time about the incident because they wanted to file a complaint against Willoughby, and all three confirmed in their statements that Willoughby's wife Rosa was with him during the incident. Willoughby filed a post-conviction petiton for a new trial based on the discovery of the new exculpatory evidence that both his ex-wife and Bayse committed perjury, which was granted. Willoughby's motion for a change of venue was granted, and he was acquitted in 2012 after his retrial in the Lander’s County Ninth District Court. Willoughby filed a federal civil rights suit in Wyoming’s U.S. District Court on Sept. 17, 2012, that asserted his constitutional rights were violated by the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office, then-Sheriff's Capt. Brian Ketterhagen, then-Sheriff's Deputy Sarah Brew, and then county attorney investigator Randall Hanson. In August 2013 Willoughby's lawsuit was settled for $1.25 million." |
Conviction Caused By: |
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Innocence Proved By: |
"Willoughby filed a post-conviction petiton for a new trial based on the discovery of the new exculpatory evidence, which was granted in 2012. The Sublette County Da declined to retry Willoughby and he was released." |
Defendant Aided By: |
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Compensation Awarded: |
"$1.25 mil. (Sublette County, Aug. 2013)" |
Was Perpetrator Identified? |
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Age When Imprisoned: |
45 |
Age When Released: |
48 |
Sex: |
Male |
Skin/Ethnicity: |
White |
Information Source 1: |
"Willoughby awarded $1.25M in suit settlement: DCI investigation drawing closer to finale, By Joy Ufford (staff writer), Pinedale Online (Pinedale, WY), October 23, 2013" |
Information Location 1: |
http://www.pinedaleonline.com/news/2013/10/Willoughbyawarded125.htm |
Information Source 2: |
"Wyoming settles lawsuit over murder investigation, By Ben Neary (Associated Press reporter), Casper Star & Tribune (Casper, WY), Oct. 5, 2013" |
Information Location 2: |
http://trib.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/wyoming-settles-lawsuit-over-murder-investigation/article_9c8b3011-4b23-558f-a123-7e375d068ba7.html |
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Innocents Database Created and Maintained by Hans Sherrer innocents@forejustice.org