The People v. Dupree Glass and Juan Rayford

Los Angeles, California criminal defendant lawyers represented Defendants charged with attempted murder after a 2004 shooting.



Glass and Rayford were 17 and 18, respectively, when they were arrested after a shooting during an altercation involving a group of teens in Lancaster, north of Los Angeles. Two people were struck by gunfire, but the injuries were not serious, according to court filings.



The actual perpetrator was Chad Brandon McZeal, a gang member who's serving a life sentence for murder in an unrelated case.



Defense counsel claimed that there was no evidence connecting the Defendants to the shooting.

Defendants were found guilty of 11 counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences, but their convictions were reversed and they were found innocent on retrial based, in part, on the testimony of the actual shooter.

Under California law, each of the men will be paid $140 a day for every day there were incarcerated or about $900,000. Glass, 36, and Rayford, 37, now both work as drivers for Walmart. Rayford is with his high school sweetheart, who waited for him while he was in prison. Both men are new fathers to baby girls. Their case was taken up by the Innocence Rights project at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.