COLDWATER, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – A Kalamazoo man who the State of Michigan now says was wrongly convicted of a double murder 21 years ago was released from the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater Friday morning.
71-year-old Jeff Titus was greeted with hugs and handshakes as he left the state prison, telling WOOD-TV 8 , “It’s been 22 years waiting for this day and it should never have happened in the first place. I’m just ecstatic and overjoyed to finally be out. … I want to see my grandkids. I haven’t seen them.”
Titus was convicted in 2002 of killing hunters Doug Estes and Jim Bennett in the Fulton State Game Area in November 1990.
The original detectives on the case decided he could not have done it because he was hunting himself more than 25 miles away. Cold case detectives who took up the case in 2000 rejected that conclusion.
The Michigan Attorney General’s Conviction Integrity Unit, working with the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic, confirmed that the jury in Titus’ trial was never told about an alternate suspect, a serial killer named Thomas Dillon, who was convicted of hunting down and killing hunters during that time period in Ohio. Dillon passed away in 2011.
Evidence pointed to his involvement. Attorney General Dana Nessel said the prosecutors and cold case detectives didn’t have the 30 pages of information about Dillon, either. The Innocence Clinic took up the case in 2012, with 35 law students working on it under the guidance of attorney David Moran.
A federal judge signed an order Friday morning saying Titus should be “released from Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) custody forthwith.” The order vacated his convictions and granted him a new trial.
The order had been expected Thursday but bad weather closed the federal courthouse in Detroit, delaying Titus’ release.
A new trial will be scheduled in the case.
