CARL HUBBARD WITH SISTER TAMARA
CLEMENCY FOR CARL HUBBARD
Carl Hubbard has spent over 30 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Carl and his family have fought for decades to prove his innocence, collecting compelling new evidence, including a recantation by the prosecution’s sole “eyewitness.” The MacArthur Justice Center is urging the Michigan Parole Board to end this miscarriage of justice by granting Carl a full pardon.
Act now to help free Carl Hubbard! Send a letter to the Michigan Parole Board here.
From Editor Diane Bukowski: VOD is asking all justice-loving people to sign this petition. We have published multiple stories on Carl Hubbard’s case, following his battle through an unjust court system all the way to the Sixth Circuit.(VOD stories linked below).
Carl’s Story
Carl Hubbard with mother and siblings
Carl Lyndell Hubbard was born on September 19, 1964, in Helena, Arkansas. He was one of nine siblings. His mother was a sharecropper, and she largely raised Carl and his siblings on her own. She taught Carl that God would put food on the table and shoes on her feet, but in reality, his mother did that for all of them day in and day out.
She moved the family to Detroit in 1968. There, they faced poverty, discrimination, and violence. Carl was often targeted, including by local gangs. While he dreamed of playing football at Michigan State, he struggled in school because of his fear of violence in the neighborhood. He eventually dropped out of school and began working. He dreamed of buying a home and starting his own business. And he still plans to do so someday. But he has spent more than three decades in prison, since his wrongful conviction in 1992, for a crime he did not commit. In that time, several family members, including Carl’s mother, have passed away. Carl’s daughter has raised two children that Carl has never been able to meet. Now 61 years old, Carl wants nothing more than to spend the time he has remaining with those he loves.
Carl’s Case
In 1992, Carl’s life changed forever when he was framed for murder. A person named Rodnell Penn was shot and killed in the middle of the night in the neighborhood of Detroit in which Carl was living. The trail in Penn’s case soon went cold. The police found no eyewitnesses to the shooting, no blood samples or DNA evidence point to a suspect, and no murder weapon. But as has been revealed through an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, it was a “lawless time for Detroit’s homicide division.” Detectives regularly coerced false confessions in order to close cases.
One notorious detective named Joann Kinney—the lead investigator in Penn’s case—was no different. In a different case, Kinney had admitted to having someone “locked up as a witness for days without charges” and “threatening to take [the person’s] children away if she did not cooperate.” In another case, Kinney charged someone with murder “without a ‘scintilla of evidence.’”
To close Penn’s case, Kinney followed her familiar practice. Almost a week after the shooting, Kinney came across a nineteen-year-old named Curtis Collins walking in the area. At the time, Collins was in violation of his parole. The police ultimately took Collins into custody and pressured him to pin the crime on Carl. They threatened to “give [him] the max” for his parole violation if he did not cooperate.
Carl Hubbard, sister Evelyn
Collins yielded and became Kinney’s star witness. He claimed that he was at a party store that night near the scene of the crime, and when he heard gunshots, he turned around and saw someone running away. Despite the lack of any streetlights and being about three hundred and seventy-five feet away—more than the length of a football field—Collins claimed he spotted a small scar on the back of the person’s head. Collins claimed that he did not see the person’s face, but said the scar identified the person as Carl. Collins’ claimed identification was impossible, and it did not make much sense. The prosecution’s own expert witness could not recreate it when he tried to observe the scene from the party store, even in the clear light of day.
On the first day of trial, Collins recanted. He revealed that he had not seen Carl that night, and Collins had not even been in the area. He explained that the homicide detectives had tried to coerce him to testify falsely.
But when Collins left the stand, he was arrested and threatened with prosecution for perjury and for Penn’s murder. Collins buckled again, and on the last day of trial, he returned to the stand, claiming he did, in fact, see someone fleeing the scene and identified the scar. Citing Collins’ testimony, the court convicted Carl and sentenced him to life in prison.
However, Collins came forward on Carl’s behalf in 2019 to confirm his recantation. The interview below and one taken by a forensic examiner fully exonerated Carl.
In the decades since his conviction in 1992, Carl has worked tirelessly to collect new evidence proving his innocence. He has done so in spite of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, which illegally destroyed the case files from Carl’s prosecution and countless others. Among other things, he has found:
- The owners of the party store near the shooting—whom the police never interviewed—who swore that neither Collins nor Carl was in their store that night, disproving Collins’s identification story.
- A sworn recantation from Collins, admitting that he lied on the last day of Carl’s trial. Collins not only signed a sworn affidavit in 2017, in which he offered to testify, but also passed a polygraph examination in 2018.
- Multiple witnesses who heard Collins admit at the time of the prosecution that the police were coercing him to testify falsely.
U.S. Sixth Circuit Judge Ransey Guy Cole, Jr.
Reviewing this evidence in 2024, when Carl sought federal habeas relief, Judge R. Guy Cole, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit wrote: “[A]ny reasonable juror would doubt a conviction based on such a shaky foundation that all has since collapsed: where the new evidence impeaches the key parts of the old evidence, the State’s key witness has been discredited, and an unquestioned suspect is at play. Such doubt demands relief.”
But in a split panel decision, the Sixth Circuit held that Carl’s federal habeas petition was untimely under the strict rules of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), and the majority rejected his request for equitable tolling based on his showing of actual innocence. Judge Cole would have granted tolling because Carl demonstrated actual innocence.
ACT NOW TO HELP FREE CARL HUBBARD
The MacArthur Justice Center, alongside co-counsel Paige Tenkhoff at King and Spalding and Alexander Kazam, represent Mr. Hubbard in pursuing a clemency application to the Michigan Parole Board.
The Michigan Parole Board has the power to recommend Carl Hubbard for a full pardon. We filed a clemency petition on July 7, 2026.
Carl is supported in these efforts by many friends and family. For example:
- His daughter LaTorria writes: “[M]y sincerest request is that my father be granted clemency. He has remained loving and devoted to his entire family even behind bars . . . . I need him. His grandchildren need him. His entirely family need him.”
- His sister Tamara writes: “As the youngest child, I have witnessed how the suffering is compounded by overwhelming loneliness and grief, especially for my oldest living brother who has always been a pillar in our family. . . . I respectfully implore you to grant clemency to my brother. Your compassion can make a crucial difference—not only by correcting a miscarriage of justice but also giving him a chance to receive the care and dignity he deserves.”
Kenneth Nixon
Kenneth Nixon, an exoneree from a wrongful conviction and co-founder of the Organization of Exonerees, writes: “I hope you will have the courage to acknowledge the wrong that’s been done here and the humanity still waiting to be restored. Carl Hubbard is not a lost cause. He is a man worth saving. We are ready for him. Please help us bring him home.”
Please help us urge the Michigan Parole Board to grant Carl’s application
In Carl’s own words: “I have had a hard life, but I am a good person, and I want to make something of my life. I hope you will give me this chance. I have already served decades in prison for a crime I did not commit. Please let me get back to my family and begin picking up the
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