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A lawyer's tenacity has gotten her brother's murder conviction
overturned.
And on Thursday, Kenneth Waters, 48, walked out of court a free man
after serving 18 years of a life sentence in prison for a murder he and
his sister say he didn't commit.
Waters was convicted in 1983 of killing Katherina Brow in Ayer, Mass.
But his sister, Betty Anne Waters, 46, was so convinced her brother was
innocent that she worked as a waitress and bartender so she could
afford to go to college and get her law degree in order to represent
him.
On Thursday, her motion for a new trial based on DNA evidence was
granted by a Middlesex County Superior Court judge who vacated the
conviction. Those new DNA results proved blood found at the murder
scene did not belong to either her brother or the victim.
"It's great to be free," Waters said as he walked out of the
Cambridge, Mass., courtroom and into the arms of happy relatives.
After earning her law degree from Roger Williams University School of
Law in Rhode Island at age 40, Betty Anne Waters said her goal was to
learn as much as she could in order to help her brother. During her
second year in law school, the mother of two learned about DNA and
about former O.J. Simpson attorney Barry Scheck's Innocence Project, a
group that uses forensic testing to clear people wrongly convicted of
crimes.
Scheck said it was an "amazing case," in that a single mother with
two children put herself through law school so she could learn enough
to prove her brother's innocence.
Betty Anne Waters said she is prepared to defend her brother if there
is a new trial, but indicated she may give up her legal career if
charges against her brother are dropped permanently.
overturned.
And on Thursday, Kenneth Waters, 48, walked out of court a free man
after serving 18 years of a life sentence in prison for a murder he and
his sister say he didn't commit.
Waters was convicted in 1983 of killing Katherina Brow in Ayer, Mass.
But his sister, Betty Anne Waters, 46, was so convinced her brother was
innocent that she worked as a waitress and bartender so she could
afford to go to college and get her law degree in order to represent
him.
On Thursday, her motion for a new trial based on DNA evidence was
granted by a Middlesex County Superior Court judge who vacated the
conviction. Those new DNA results proved blood found at the murder
scene did not belong to either her brother or the victim.
"It's great to be free," Waters said as he walked out of the
Cambridge, Mass., courtroom and into the arms of happy relatives.
After earning her law degree from Roger Williams University School of
Law in Rhode Island at age 40, Betty Anne Waters said her goal was to
learn as much as she could in order to help her brother. During her
second year in law school, the mother of two learned about DNA and
about former O.J. Simpson attorney Barry Scheck's Innocence Project, a
group that uses forensic testing to clear people wrongly convicted of
crimes.
Scheck said it was an "amazing case," in that a single mother with
two children put herself through law school so she could learn enough
to prove her brother's innocence.
Betty Anne Waters said she is prepared to defend her brother if there
is a new trial, but indicated she may give up her legal career if
charges against her brother are dropped permanently.