Scott Hornoff spent six years and nine months in prison for a crime he did not commit. After released he had this to say, "I'll tell you this though; if this could happen to me it could happen to anyone." When asked if he was bitter he replied that he didn't have time for bitterness, he had almost seven years of living to make up.

Scott Hornoff is one of the lucky ones. More than one-hundred twenty wrongfully convicted inmates have been freed in recent years. These people have lost years from their lives. Their relationships with family and friends have been severed due to the wrongful conviction. The falsely accused sit in prisons all over this country, and some have been executed for crimes they did not commit.
 
Police officer Scott Hornoff was convicted of murdering Vicky Cushman and sentenced to life in prison. He was not the usual suspect, "...a forty-year old white guy, a cop," in his own words. The system failed him and Vicky Cushman. It would take the confession of the real killer for Hornoff to be released.
 
What was the case against Hornoff? He had an affair with Cushman, just three or four encounters. He had lied about it when questioned by the police early in their investigation. Hornoff had ended the affair just a few days before Cushman was murdered. Cushman had written a letter, begging Hornoff not to end the affair, which the police found at the scene. This letter, they felt, was a motive for the murder. Ironically while they did recover Cushman's letter, they failed to find Cushman's Rolodex file which contained the name of the real murderer, along with a phone number.
Prosecutors admit that their case against Hornoff was circumstantial. No witnesses, no blood stains, or fingerprints to implicate Hornoff. The police were sure that a blood-stained fire extinguisher, which had no fingerprints on it, was the murder weapon. The real killer confessed that he had killed Cushman with a shattered and bloody jewelry box. A pair of kitchen gloves was also found at the scene, turned inside out. Despite the bloody murder scene, there were no bloodstains on Hornoff's clothing or car.

There were two separate investigations into the case, spanning a period of five years. The first was carried out by the Warwick Police Department Major Crimes Unit. There was a tradition of competition within the department that created open animosity between Hornoff's group and the detectives assigned to the investigation. "I didn't hide the fact that I wasn't impressed with their abilities," Hornoff said.
 
Hornoff had been drinking heavily with brother officers the night of the murder, and had left the party at one point to return a few hours later. The investigators asked Hornoff about Cushman and if he had had sex with her. They did not mention the letter they had found. Hornoff lied and said that he did not know Cushman, although he later admitted to the affair and passed a polygraph. No recording was ever made of this interrogation, and the polygraph results were lost. This led the second group of investigators from the state police to believe that there had been a cover up by Hornoff's department to protect him. Nothing could be further from the truth. To the Warwick police, the lies and letter were damning evidence pointing to Hornoff's guilt even though there was no physical evidence.

Hornoff cooperated in the investigation despite his reservations concerning the officers' abilities. Against his lawyer's advice, he continued talking to the police. He would later call this a terrible mistake in judgment, concluding, "I trusted the system".

The first investigation continued for several years until it was declared a dead end. However, pressure by some within the Warwick Police Department, Cushman's parents and media remained. The Rhode Island State Police were eventually assigned to the case by the attorney general.

The state police were told to start with Hornoff. State investigators charged that the Warwick P.D. had botched the investigation at the crime scene. The state eventually brought one hundred and fifty witnesses before two grand juries and the grand jury indicted Hornoff. A strong circumstantial case was presented and a guilty verdict was rendered.
 
Hornoff had retained competent private counsel with plenty of experience. There was no false testimony presented. No botched lab tests. One can only guess what brought the jury to their decision of convicting an innocent man. Was it the allegations of a police cover up, the sheer number of witnesses, the seeming fact that there were no other suspects? Or was it Hornoff's lies about knowing Cushman? One of Hornoff's attorneys would say, "When one tries to cover up a smaller lie, it reflects poorly when they're thought to have committed a bigger crime."

The involvement of the media played no small part in the jury's ultimate decision. The story had been carried by all types of media in a massive display of coverage. The coverage was sensationalized and editorialized beyond all boundaries of fair reporting.

An appeal of Hornoff's case was turned down in 1999. Joe Occhapinto, then president of the National Police Defense Foundation, would say, "I think a lot of it had to do with politics and the notoriety on a small town police department. Guy's careers are on the line and if they make a mistake, then career enhancement is down the drain. But, hey, it happens".

Thirteen years after Vicky Cushman's murder the true killer confessed, and Hornoff was released. It was a man named Tom Barry, a name that could have been found by police if they ever opened Cushman's Rolodex file. Hornoff commented after his release, "The system failed, it didn't do what it was supposed to do because it imprisoned an innocent man. I'm really sick and tired of hearing that our judicial system, in spite of its flaws, is the best in the world. That doesn't give much consolation to the innocent people and their loved ones who have to go through what I went through and what my family went through".

Assisting Hornoff after his wrongful conviction was Robert N. Feldman and Amanda Metts, through their work at the New England Innocence Project . The project freed six innocent men in its first three years, men who had served a combined sixty years in prison.

Wrongfully Convicted: Jeffrey Scott Hornoff

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