'I always knew the truth': Man falsely imprisoned for 18 years exonerated of O.C. robbery

For 6,895 days, Guy Miles sat behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.

He lost years of freedom, along with the opportunity to watch his son grow up.

But now, authorities have officially exonerated him — acknowledging his innocence in the 1998 Fullerton heist that robbed him of nearly two decades of his life.

“I always knew the truth,” Miles said in a statement Friday. “I just needed the system to catch up to it.”

Miles said he was grateful the truth mattered, even after all these years, but that he wishes more than anything his dad were alive to see his name cleared.

He was originally convicted of two counts of armed robbery and a firearms charge in 1999 following the robbery of a Fidelity Financial Services office, and given a “three strikes sentence” of 75 years to life.

His conviction was based in part on the false testimony of two eyewitnesses, despite the fact that five people testified Miles was in Las Vegas on the day of the crime, according to the Orange County district attorney’s office.

He was separated from his young son and spent more than 18 years incarcerated, all while maintaining his innocence.

In 2010, he filed a habeas petition to challenge his detention with assistance from the Innocence Center, a San Diego-based nonprofit law firm dedicated to freeing people who have been wrongly convicted.

According to the center, two men — later identified as Jason Steward and Harold Bailey — pulled firearms on two Fidelity employees and demanded money in June 1998. They made off with $1,410 in cash and $4,138 in personal checks in a getaway car driven by another man, Bernard Teamer.

Police initially struggled to identify suspects, as the descriptions given were generic and a detective compiled an error-ridden photo lineup, according to the center.

Read the full article at Yahoo News.