EXCLUSIVE: Hear from man who could be set free after murder conviction 28 years ago
TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) -- The day didn’t start like Corey Atchison planned.
He left the courthouse cuffed and still in his orange jumpsuit.
“Whatever, however long, I am going to do it, I’ve done it this long,” he said.
For 28 years, Atchison has maintained that he is not the person who fatally shot James Warren Lane on August 3, 1990.
“Truth lasts forever,” he said.
Judge Sharon Holmes has reviewed Atchison’s case over the last several months.
Today, Atchison and his attorney hoped she would find him innocent.
Instead, she said she needed a little more time.
“It hurt, but it won’t keep me laid down, I will still walk.”
Still far from the freedom, he has prayed for.
But maybe, closer than ever.
Atchison says he remembers everything about the morning of the shooting.
It happened near 4th and Atlanta.
“Everybody be out there, everything, drug users, prostitutes,” Atchison described the area.
And on that early morning, a deadly shooting that changed Atchison’s life.
“I look and I seen this dude fall,” Atchison said. “We get out of the car and see he was still breathing, there was a lot of people so I was hollering, somebody call the ambulance for him.”
That night, Atchison says police searched his car and sent him on his way.
“Six months later I am arrested.”
So, what's changed? The prosecution's key witness, the one who sent Atchison to prison, now claims police pressured him into lying. And it was an easy story for a jury to believe, even Atchison admits he was no boy scout.
“I wanted to be a gang member at the time,” he said.
Maybe, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"I am still innocent," Atchison said.
Should Judge Holmes agree, Atchison has a whole world he hasn't seen for 28 years.
“I don't really know what I want to do because my goal all of these years, was just to be free,” Atchison said.
