MAN JAILED 38 YEARS FOR MURDER HE DIDN’T COMMIT GETS $25M
Maurice Hastings, 72, spent 38 years in a California prison for the 1983 sexual assault and murder of Roberta Wydermyer, a crime DNA evidence later showed he did not commit. He has now been awarded $25 million, which his lawyers called the largest wrongful conviction settlement in California history, according to NBC News and The Associated Press.
Court documents made public on September 22, 2025, showed the settlement stemmed from a lawsuit that alleged two Inglewood Police Department officers and a Los Angeles County district attorney investigator framed Hastings. Those are allegations from the lawsuit. The Los Angeles Times reported that Hastings accepted an offer from the City of Inglewood.
“No amount of money could ever restore the 38 years of my life that were stolen from me,” Hastings said in a statement. “But this settlement is a welcome end to a very long road, and I look forward to moving on with my life.”
The DNA that pointed to someone else
Wydermyer was killed by a single gunshot to the head. According to the Times, her body was found in the trunk of her vehicle in Inglewood.
Hastings was charged with special-circumstance murder, and prosecutors sought the death penalty. The Times reported that the first jury deadlocked. A second jury convicted him, and in 1988 he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
At the time of the autopsy, the coroner conducted a sexual assault examination and collected bodily fluids from the perpetrator, according to the district attorney’s office. Hastings asked for DNA testing of that evidence in 2000, but the DA’s office denied the request.
In 2021, he filed an innocence claim with the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit. The Los Angeles Innocence Project at Cal State LA also worked on the case, according to Cal State LA. Testing showed the semen was not his.
The DNA profile was run through a state database and matched Kenneth Packnett. Packnett had been convicted in a separate case involving an armed kidnapping and forced copulation of a woman who was placed in a vehicle’s trunk, details that closely resembled Wydermyer’s killing.
Hastings’ lawyers said Packnett was arrested less than three weeks after the 1983 murder in connection with an unrelated car theft. When he was arrested, police found jewelry and a coin purse matching items Wydermyer had when she was killed. Packnett was not investigated for her murder at the time. Court documents cited by the Times say he allegedly carjacked Wydermyer on June 19, 1983.
Packnett died in prison in 2020 while serving a separate sentence, prosecutors said.
Freed, then declared factually innocent
In October 2022, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan vacated Hastings’ conviction at the request of prosecutors and his lawyers. The case was dismissed and Hastings was ordered released. He was 69.
On March 1, 2023, Ryan went further and declared him factually innocent, meaning the evidence proves conclusively that Hastings did not commit the crime. Cal State LA said the ruling cleared his arrest and prosecution from his record.
“Although Mr. Hastings was released in October 2022 from custody, the court’s finding of factual innocence is crucial to ensuring that justice is truly done in this case,” Ayesha Hussain, a Los Angeles Innocence Project staff attorney, said in court. Hastings told Cal State LA, “I’m a happy man today.”
His attorney Nick Brustin said the settlement should serve as a warning. “Police departments throughout California and across the country should take notice that there is a steep price to pay for allowing such egregious misconduct on their watch,” Brustin said.
Hastings lives in Southern California, where his attorneys said he is active in his church.
