8 Years In Jail For Crime They Didn't Commit -- Wrongful Murder Conviction Overturned By L.A.Judge -- Local Investigator Helped Pair Gain Freedom

As he watches Clarence Chance and Benny Powell walk into freedom after nearly 18 years in prison, Seattle private investigator Paul Henderson only hopes they'll escape the bitterness that consumed Henderson's first famous innocent convict.

Henderson, a former reporter for The Seattle Times, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for an investigative series that reversed the conviction of Steve Titus, a South King County man wrongly accused of rape. The case led Henderson to full-time detective work.

But Titus won his freedom only to become obsessed with what the criminal-justice system had done to him. He died nine days after suffering a massive heart attack at age 35.

Titus only served a day in jail, Henderson noted. Imagine what awaits Chance, 42, and Powell, 44, who served a sizeable chunk of their life sentences for the murder of a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy.

"These defendants, it would seem to me, are going to have a rougher time just adjusting to society," said the 53-year-old investigator, whose work helped secure their release. "It's like they're coming out of a time warp. I think what lies ahead of them is rife with risk."

Jim McCloskey, a Princeton, N.J., minister/private investigator whose nonprofit agency Centurion Ministries works to free the wrongly convicted, asked Henderson to join the Chance case in late 1987.

Henderson's assignment: Read a stack of records Chance had sent to a Chicago human-rights organization in search of help. After reading a 1,500-page transcript of the case, Henderson told McCloskey it was virtually impossible Chance and his friend Powell had shot the deputy at a service station Dec. 12, 1973.

For one thing, Chance was in jail on another charge at the time of the 7 p.m. shooting, Henderson said. He was authorized for release at 5 p.m., but the release wasn't processed until 8:30 or 9.

But there were no longer documents to prove that, so Henderson and McCloskey set out to find witnesses who had implicated Chance and Powell.

It took months to find them, but once McCloskey and Henderson did, all but one recanted their testimony. With no physical evidence, the case fell apart.

Henderson said he and McCloskey have grown close to Chance and Powell, two jailhouse musicians with dreams of recording contracts. The innocent convicts say they are not bitter, but the detectives don't necessarily believe them.

"They've been in hell for 17 1/2 years," said McCloskey. "They're in heaven now. Then it's going to be a gradual fluttering down to earth."