NEW YORK — A U.S. Navy veteran imprisoned in Mexico for more than 13 years for a crime he did not commit is now a free man after a judge overturned his conviction on Wednesday in the city of Acapulco.
"I’m so happy to be out and going home and be reunited with my family and to start my life again. I’m so grateful for my second chance," 46-year-old James Frisvold told ABC News exclusively after he walked free on Thursday from the notorious Las Cruces prison.
"For years, the Frisvolds tried and failed to get the attention of three successive U.S. administrations and repeatedly related his torture and his innocence to the consular agents in Acapulco to no avail," Franks told ABC News on Wednesday."As a result of this ordeal, Mr. Frisvold hopes to start a conversation with policymakers around how to better address cases like his."
But while Schultz and Sidorova were walking down a hall in their hotel, she was brutally attacked by an unknown male assailant, according to surveillance footage obtained by ABC News. The video appears to show Schultz stood by as the man stabbed her repeatedly, and after the killer fled, Schultz went into his hotel room, returned with a bucket of ice and dumped it on her body.
Frisvold has since maintained his innocence but was stuck in prison for 13 years of complicated proceedings in a language he still doesn't understand. He was first convicted of qualified homicide in 2017, even after a government-employed criminologist testified that Frisvold could not be the man in the surveillance footage because of differences in their skull structure and facial features, according to the court documents.
His mother, Mariann Frisvold, was determined not to face the same fate as her husband -- dying without ever hugging their son again. Earlier this year, she hired Franks, who has a background in public relations and has worked with other Americans detained abroad, to take on her son's case after repeatedly sending him messages and emails.
"This is proof to me that what I've always suspected was true -- that if we could just do boots on the ground where the person is locked up and have a fair chance at making an argument, we could bring home a lot of people. And that's what happened here," Franks said in the earlier interview.
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