Sherman Townsend

On October 2, 2007, Sherman Townsend was released after spending 10 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, leaving prison 10 years early. In 2025, he was finally exonerated. He was the first client for whom GNIP’s legal team successfully won freedom. 

A false identification

In August 1997, a man broke into a home in St. Paul in the middle of the night, physically assaulted a sleeping couple, then fled. Evidence indicated that the intended purpose was sexual assault. Police officers saw Sherman walking down the street shortly after the crime and detained him. David Jones, a neighbor, then came to the scene and told police he saw Sherman flee. Jones was drunk when he made the statement. There was no other evidence linking Sherman to the crime and Sherman did not match the description given to the police. The victims described the attacker as a Black man in his twenties or thirties and voiced concerns when Sherman was brought forward as the suspect. Sherman was 47 years old.

Poor defense

Sherman attempted to fire his defense counsel after closing arguments. Sherman told the judge that he did not receive adequate representation and begged for help, pleading, “This is my life. This is my life.” He later filed an appeal due to ineffective counsel, which was denied despite the record showing that the judge had to dismiss the jury several times during the trial due to Sherman’s attorney’s lack of competence.

In 2012, Sherman’s defense attorney was suspended from practicing law in Minnesota indefinitely after the Minnesota Supreme Court found that he had, among other things, “failed to act with reasonable competence and reasonable diligence, and failed to communicate with his clients and obtain informed consent.”

During the trial, Jones testified that Sherman was the person who committed the assault. This testimony remained the only evidence of Sherman’s guilt. In 1998, Sherman was convicted of first degree burglary and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The true perpetrator comes forward

Sherman filed several appeals from prison which were all denied. In 2002, he reached out to the Great North Innocence Project (then the Innocence Project of Minnesota). The organization began digging into his case.  

In 2007, Sherman was approached in prison by David Jones, the witness who testified against him at trial. Jones was troubled to see Sherman in prison and told Sherman something startling: that Jones had fabricated his testimony under pressure by investigators and prosecutors. Then, Jones stunned Sherman and admitted that he was the one who committed the assault that night and had pointed police to Sherman to get the attention off himself.

Jones wrote a letter to GNIP confessing to the crime. The letter said, “I told [police] that I saw a man run down the street and identified him after they brought him back, not even knowing who the person was. I didn’t care who it was. …I have found that there is a man in prison here in Moose Lake for a crime that I committed….It is my wish to help him correct this injustice by accepting the responsibility for what I did back in 1997.”

GNIP filed a petition for postconviction relief based on this new evidence, and in October 2007, Sherman was back in court with his lawyers to request a new trial, appearing before the same judge who originally sentenced Sherman.  Jones returned to court to testify, this time on Sherman’s behalf.  

Jones described that he was drunk when he broke into the home with the intent to commit sexual assault, and stated that he touched multiple things in the home. He drew a detailed map of the crime scene, and mocked the police investigation, saying “My fingerprints were everywhere. The computer, the duct tape, the knife, the light bulbs.” He further confessed to raping 8-10 women after the thwarted attempt and said that if police had stopped him that night, those women would not have been victims.

At the hearing, the GNIP team brought up Jones’ prior convictions, which were not mentioned during Sherman’s trial.  The convictions included battery, felony theft, armed robbery, and a home invasion in which Jones admitted under oath that his intent was to rape a woman. When the judge asked a Hennepin prosecutor why this evidence was missing in the original trial, the prosecutor called it a “regrettable circumstance.” 

Jones’ confession that he committed the assault meant that there was no longer any evidence against Sherman.

While waiting for the judge’s ruling on the new trial, Hennepin County prosecutor Freeman offered Sherman a deal: he could take his time served, be released immediately, and accept the conviction or he could wait for the judge’s ruling and eventually have a new trial. Sherman took the deal and left prison on October 2, 2007.

His mother was very ill at the time he was offered the deal, and Sherman couldn’t give up the guarantee of seeing his mother before passing away. He said, “One of the main things I asked God for at the beginning of prison was, ‘Please don’t let my mother die while I’m in prison.’ And she ended up dying five months after I got out.”

As Sherman walked out of the court he said, “I don’t think they took my life away. I think I go from this day forward.” 

Finally exonerated

18 years after his release, Sherman’s name was finally cleared when he received an innocence-based pardon. The Pardon Board, made up of the Minnesota governor, attorney general, and state supreme court chief justice voted unanimously in favor of a pardon for Sherman. The decision by the Pardon Board followed a unanimous vote by the Minnesota Clemency Review Commission in November 2024 recommending that Mr. Townsend receive a full pardon. He was represented by the Great North Innocence Project, and pro bono attorneys from Maslon LLP, Jevon Bindman and Emily Taylor.

“I am 75 years old, but this makes me want to live another 20 years.”

— Sherman Townsend after receiving an innocence-based pardon

Sherman’s story is, finally, featured in the National Registry of Exonerations.

Sherman at the 2022 Benefit for Innocence
Sherman speaking about his story at the 2023 Benefit for Innocence

News Coverage