It was late at night on April 13, 1998 when lights on a pickup truck were seen flashing by the police who found it abandoned on the side of a remote stretch of California’s I-15 in Riverside County. Nearby, lying in the rocks on the shore of Corona Lake in CA, police found Terry Cheek, a mother of 2, strangled to death. Despite a contentious divorce, the investigators quickly turned their eye to Horace Roberts, a co-worker with whom Terry Cheek was having an affair with. After 3 trials – a covered up affair, a watch, and an abandoned truck is all it took to convict Horace Roberts of second degree murder. Nearly 2 decades later, advanced DNA testing proved that the watch nor the DNA under the victim’s nails belonged to Horace Roberts, but rather to that of her estranged husband and his nephew, who are now about to stand trial for her murder. It took 20 years for him to be exonerated.

Courtroom Confidential’s new Inside Innocence series, brings you compelling cases from the working files of the California Innocence Project. www.CaliforniaInnocenceProject.org