He spent 21 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now, he wants justice.

He is now suing those he says are responsible for his wrongful conviction, including the city of Moultrie, the Moultrie Police Department, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and a number of individuals for their alleged role in the investigation and conviction.

“This is Sedrick Moore’s effort to obtain justice and accountability,” he said in the suit. “He seeks compensation, to the extent possible, for the harms he suffered, and deterrence, so that what happened to him does not happen to anyone ever again in the State of Georgia.”

The case against Moore fell apart when DNA evidence was examined, adding his to a growing list of older cases being impacted by new technology as it becomes available. The GBI and other Georgia law enforcement organizations have recently touted a series of arrests as decades-old cold cases get new breakthroughs.

The Philadelphia native was living in his hometown in April 1999 when he was stopped by police and told there were warrants for his arrest in Georgia.

Moore said he didn’t understand what was happening. He had only gone to Moultrie years prior to visit his mother’s side of the family and didn’t think much of it after he left.

What he didn’t know is that in February 1993, three Moultrie men went on a home robbery spree, where they shot two victims before breaking into a woman’s home on Feb. 15, 1993, and raping her.

Although Moore wasn’t originally a suspect, one of the suspects, Tyrone White, in exchange for having his charges dropped, agreed to testify against alleged co-suspects, and named Moore and Kerry Robinson as two of his accomplices.

Moore said he didn’t know White personally but had met him at least once through a friend. Even when the trial started, he didn’t think there was any evidence to prove he was guilty.

The victim had identified White and another man as the suspects, and never identified Moore as being involved. The DNA of the other man was never tested, according to the lawsuit.

During trial, the jury heard testimony from White, the victim, Moultrie Police Department investigators and Brad Pearson, a GBI forensic scientist at the time.

White and the victim had contradictory testimony during the trial. According to the lawsuit, an alleged witness also testified in court and was unable to identify Moore, said he didn’t write the statement police had presented during trial and that he didn’t remember speaking to police about the incident.

Pearson’s testimony related to the DNA evidence collected from a sexual assault kit performed on the victim shortly after the rape. The DNA testing at the time came back as a match to White.

However, Pearson testified there were a mixture of multiple DNA profiles remaining after White’s and the victim’s were excluded. Pearson said there were four partial DNA alleles -- a type of genetic material -- that remained and he couldn’t exclude Moore and Robinson as the possible matches for these additional DNA.

“He repeatedly stated that the DNA ”matched" the other two co-defendants," McDaniel wrote in his order granting the motion for new trial.

Pearson even doubled down when asked by prosecutors whether there were alleles present that matched Moore and Robinson, with Pearson saying there was.

Moore said he remember thinking that it couldn’t have been a match and was surprised at Pearson’s attempts to explain it to the jury.

“I was in disbelief for that and just shocked and I just felt like, even that wasn’t enough for them to get a conviction and I just thought that the truth would come out but sadly, it didn’t,” Moore said.

Still he ended up being convicted.

Moore, 23 at the time, would end up being convicted in 2002 and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Both he and Robinson appealed their convictions but were denied.

It wasn’t until 2018 that new technology and testing was able to show Robinson and Moore were not matches for the partial DNA profiles found.

Robinson was exonerated on Jan. 8, 2020, after his motion for a new trial was granted and prosecutors dropped his charges.

In a statement, the GBI said it could not comment on pending litigation. The city of Moultrie and Moultrie Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.

Georgia only recently passed legislation allowing for compensation for people who are wrongfully imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. Under the new statue, people who served prison time in Georgia for felonies they didn’t commit, had their convictions reversed or vacated, and were acquitted, pardoned or had their charges dismissed are entitled to $75,000 for each year they wrongfully spent behind bars.

Moore’s suit joins several other cases filed by people who were freed from prison after the cases against them fell apart. For example, late last year, Daryl “Lee” Clark, who was freed after a podcast brought fresh eyes to his case, filed a suit alleging corrupt police officers intentionally railroaded him into a murder conviction for which he spent 25 years in prison.

And the city of LaGrange recently agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a suit filed by a man who spent 40 years in prison for crimes he says he didn’t commit, after four convictions against him were overturned.

Credit: Provided by Moore Family

Credit: Provided by Moore Family

Moore said his wife, Holly, who he married after his release, took an interest into his case and began working diligently to help him prove his innocence.

“I wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t for her. She’s the one that got the lawyer, she’s the one that called him every day when he wasn’t getting back,” Moore said. “She called everybody.”

Andy Conn, one of Moore’s attorneys in the civil suit, said their approach is more about seeking justice for Moore and making sure this doesn’t happen again.

“When you’re stripped of your rights in this way and 21 years for something you didn’t commit, I can’t imagine being as nice about it as Sedrick is and not still being angry,” he said. “I think Sedrick is a tremendous human being for approaching it that way.”

Another of Moore’s lawyers, Steve Lowry, said the evidence in the case was “extremely weak.” He said Moore is the reason they took the case.

“It’s something that breaks most people and it never broke Sedrick,” Lowry said. “All the injustice that you see in that case is bad, but I would say the driving force behind this case and why we believe in it is because of Sedrick.”

The most difficult part for Moore was the fact he was leaving behind his two children and many other family members for something he didn’t do.

“I was thinking about them. When you send a person to prison, innocent or guilty, but especially innocent, there’s a lot of people that suffer from that, a lot of family,” Moore said. “You are taking a person from a mother, from a father and so forth and it’s people that’s counting on you out here to do things and help and that was a lot of what was on my mind once I was convicted.”

He said that during his time in prison, he came to understand that being angry wasn’t going to help his situation and he tried to focus instead on how to free himself.

“I don’t hold any anger even now,” he said.