He has been in prison for almost forty years, but experts believe he is innocent

Scott Macklem died young. The student was just 20 years old when he was shot in 1986 in the parking lot of his university in Port Huron, USA. A year later, another young man was sentenced to life in prison: Fred Freeman, then only 23 years old. He has now been in prison for murder for 36 years.

Freeman and his lawyers believe the verdict is incorrect. This was reported by the American television channel NBC. Their main argument: There is no evidence that Freeman, now called Temujin Kensu and converted to Buddhism, was even in Port Huron.

The verdict was handed down in 1986 on the assumption that the then young man in Escanaba had booked a private plane that would have taken him to the other side of Michigan. There he shot Macklem, returned to the airport and got a flight from Port Huron back to Escanaba. Distance one way: 700 kilometers.

“This is so unlikely it’s unbelievable,” says Harvey Setter. The 82-year-old is an aviation expert and wrote one of the letters Freeman’s lawyers are relying on in their new effort to free a man they say was wrongly convicted.

They sent Setter’s letter to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, along with those from two other experts. It was hoped that Whitmer could pardon Freeman.

It is not the first attempt, on the contrary, it could be the last. Because Freeman’s lawyers have tried almost everything, appealing again and again and providing new evidence of the supposed absurdity of a state flight.

But they have been shot down repeatedly — most recently by Michigan’s attorney general, who claimed there was no evidence of Freeman’s innocence. The authority did not comment on whether there was evidence of his guilt.

A mistake, according to Freeman’s lawyer Imran Syed. The experts whose letters he sent to Whitmer investigated the matter and assessed whether such an escape would have been possible in this way. “And they made it clear: it wouldn’t be.” He hopes for the governor: “It is simply impossible that he committed this crime. There is no reason to keep him in jail.”

Veteran martial artist Freeman was nicknamed the “Ninja Killer” during the 1987 trial. During the trial, the prosecutor portrayed him as aggressive and called as witness pilot Bob Evans, who did not see the man near the airport but argued that it was possible to come to the tarmac and spontaneously rent a private flight .

There were pilots constantly hanging around their planes ready to take Freeman to Port Huron and back. In contrast, there are defense witnesses who testify to this day that the then 23-year-old was with them in Escanaba at the time of Macklem’s death, 450 miles away.

Bob Evans is now dead – and his credibility from a defense perspective is questionable. A former airport employee said such a flight would have been spotted in Escanaba. “The airport is often not used for days. No aircraft will depart during this time.”

Therefore, the idea that pilots would wait there for incoming customers is a “complete invention.” Another man, who reportedly knew the pilot before his death, wrote in his letter to the governor that Evans was his friend but “not exactly known for his honesty.” Whitmer’s office has not yet commented on how it plans to handle the experts’ letters — or whether it thinks a pardon for Freeman is conceivable.

But why did the young man actually get on a plane almost forty years ago, travel a total of 1,400 kilometers and shoot a 20-year-old? Jealousy, the prosecutor argued in 1987: the victim, Scott Macklem, was said to have had a relationship with Freeman’s then fiancée.