Long exonerated for crime he didn’t commit, Minnesota man finally gets a pardon

Sherman Townsend said he only had two prayers during his 10-year wrongful imprisonment: to get out of prison before his mother died and to see the Minnesota Vikings win a Super Bowl before he dies.

So when he was offered either a new trial or to leave prison immediately with the conviction still on his record, it was an easy choice. He walked out of state custody in 2007 in time to spend a few months with his mother before she suffered a stroke and passed away.

Now, 18 years later, he’s been pardoned for a crime he didn’t commit.

“It just takes a burden that I’ve carried for 28 years off my shoulders,” Townsend, 75, said in an interview.

Townsend appeared last week in front of the Minnesota Board of Pardons for the second time. The first time around, the board said it lacked the power to exonerate someone. This time, the board members — Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — agreed unanimously to remove the burglary charge from Townsend’s record.

While he received a unanimous vote this time, that’s no longer required by Minnesota Board of Pardon rules that kept him from getting pardoned the first time.

A set of changes that went into effect following legislation that passed in 2023 also created a Clemency Review Commission meant to help officials review more applications for pardons and commuted sentences. Minnesota previously issued far fewer pardons than surrounding states.

The Clemency Review Commission does the time-consuming first review of an applicants record and makes recommendations to the Board of Pardons. Townsend appeared before the commission in November in advance of his pardon hearing.

“I think the early returns anyway is that there are more pardons being granted,” said Jevon Bindman, a partner at Maslon LLP who represented Townsend pro bono in partnership with the Great North Innocence Project.

In 2023, the Board of Pardons held 64 clemency and pardon hearings. Last year, that climbed to 80. They’ve held 70 just in the first six and a half months of this year.

The commission, spokeswoman Carli Stark said in an email, “has significantly increased the state’s ability to process clemency applications and hold clemency hearings.”

Townsend was arrested in 1997 in connection with a break-in in Dinkytown in Minneapolis, and convicted in 1998 of first-degree burglary and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He had been offered a plea deal with a shorter sentence, but he didn’t want to plead guilty to a crime he hadn’t committed.

The witness who identified him to police and in court had actually committed the crime. He admitted to Townsend years later when they bumped into each other in prison that he was the perpetrator.

That confession kicked off a process to free Townsend, who was the first client of what was then called the Innocence Project of Minnesota, now the Great North Innocence Project.

Until the true perpetrator, David Jones, confessed, Townsend said, the innocence project attorneys didn’t have much to go on in their efforts to free him. And it didn’t hit Townsend the day they spoke that he might soon be free from prison.

“I didn’t have a lot of faith in the system,” he said.

It didn’t become real, he said, until a hearing where he was offered a new trial or to have his sentence reduced and be released.

Within hours, he was walking out a free man.

After prison, he took a job as a janitor. It was mostly a smooth transition back to life outside prison. But some things were an adjustment.

“You’re not used to hearing kids crying and dogs barking,” Townsend said, “so those things take a minute to get back used to.”

Townsend said he doesn’t feel resentful for the 10 years he spent paying for a crime he didn’t commit.

“I was angry as hell for a while,” he said. “I’m not going to drive myself crazy, so I had to let that go and get on with life.”

Townsend sought a pardon a few years after he was released from prison, but the board rejected his application. At the time, the board — made up of the governor, attorney general and chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court — had to agree unanimously to grant the pardon. Many states grant the governor that authority alone.

At the time, Gov. Mark Dayton voted to grant Townsend’s pardon. But then-Attorney General Lori Swanson and Chief Justice Lorie Gildea disagreed.

Under legislation passed in 2023, the board can now grant a pardon with a majority 2-1 vote so long as the governor votes to grant it.

Before voting to pardon Townsend, Gov. Tim Walz said there was “no apology for the 10 years that you spent in prison, but it’s clear to me that we are lucky to have you in our community,” according to a press release from the innocence organization that represented Townsend.

Townsend described the feeling after Walz, Ellison and Hudson voted as “euphoria.”

“Best thing other than having my kids.”

Bindman said he’s looking into obtaining wrongful incarceration compensation for Townsend.

A free man and retired from his job as a janitor, Townsend now hopes the Vikings make it to the Super Bowl.

This story contains material from the Associated Press.