A Rhode Island man convicted of killing his wife in what authorities described as the near-perfect crime has been freed from a Caribbean jail. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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David Swain’s conviction for drowning Shelley Tyre in 1999 during a scuba expedition off the British Virgin Islands was overturned by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court of Appeal.
The judicial body faulted the trial judge for the instructions read to the jury during the 2009 murder trial, held 10 years after Tyre’s death, The Associated Press reported.
“I feel elated,” Swain told reporters, adding that he intends to return to Rhode Island, “sooner rather than later.”
His daughter, Jennifer Swain Bloom, has maintained her father’s innocence in the years following her mother’s death.
“I have known the whole time he is innocent,” she told The AP after Swain’s release from prison. “I knew the system would eventually agree.”
At first, Caribbean authorities ruled Tyre’s death an accident. She drowned during a scuba trip with Swain to an isolated shipwreck at a depth of 80 feet underwater.
However, after a civil trial held in 2006 in the U.S. found Swain culpable in his wife’s death-and awarded her family $3.5 million-officials in the British Virgin Islands changed their tune.
Prosecutors in the case argued that a two-timing Swain was in love with another woman, and killed his wife to get at her money.
Swain was convicted largely on the testimony of a cavalcade of expert witnesses, who said they believed the Rhode Island man ripped off his wife’s scuba mask and cut off her air supply.
At trial, authorities said Tyre’s mask had been damaged, her snorkel’s mouthpiece lost at sea and a scuba fin was found stuck in a sandbar. A jury unanimously convicted Swain in 2009.
For his part, Swain said he intends to “breathe a little free air, go for a walk, go home, pick up the pieces and go on.”
Meanwhile, a lawyer repping Tyre’s parents said Thursday at a news conference in Warwick, Rhode Island, that even though the conviction had been overturned, it didn’t mean Swain was exonerated.
“No judicial body has declared him innocent, and two different juries have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” J. Renn Olenn told reporters.
