Thursday, December 31, 1998
Another chapter in their lives
JAIL HAUNTS INNOCENT MAN
He no longer wakes up before dawn, uncertain of his whereabouts, thinking he might still be in jail.
But Joey Macinnis can't forget the eight months he was locked up in the Hamilton County Justice Center for a crime he didn't commit.
“I don't think there's a day that goes by that I don't think about it,” he says.
The 21-year-old East End man, wrongly accused of firing shots into a crowd in his neighborhood, was released Feb. 20 after 251 days in jail. A March 20 Tempo story recounted his experiences behind bars.
Since then, he has put 15 pounds on his slender, 5-foot-9-inch frame. He is married now. He has a job. And unlike 1997, when he spent a bleak Christmas in a jail cell, last week he celebrated the holiday with his family.
Mr. Macinnis always maintained he was home asleep during the shooting, which injured no one. He told police that his girlfriend (now his wife) and his mother's boyfriend could confirm his story. With no physical evidence tying him to the crime, police and prosecutors built their case around three witnesses.
One by one, over several months, the witnesses admitted they had made a mistake, culminating in Mr. Macinnis' dramatic acquittal in a Hamilton County Common Pleas courtroom.
Now he's back in the East End, sitting on a couch with his wife, Lisa, 20. He proposed over the phone, two weeks after he was jailed. They were married May 2 in a Clifton church in front of 150 family members and friends.
Their framed marriage license hangs on a wall in their second-floor apartment, not far from where the shooting occurred. Both grew up in the neighborhood.
“I used to always love to be down here,” Mr. Macinnis says.
“We were always outside, hanging out with our friends,” Lisa says.
But not anymore, they say. They want to move out of the East End.
Mr. Macinnis says he is leery of Cincinnati police. He's still bitter about the way they handled the investigation. They failed to swab his hands for gunpowder residue, he notes, which would have indicated if he had recently fired a gun.
Mr. Macinnis, a high school dropout, had trouble finding work after his release from jail. Finally, in late September, he got a job at Robbins Inc. The company's Newtown factory makes floors for professional and college basketball arenas.
He builds 8-foot-by-4-foot floor panels. “I like it very much,” he says.
After the Enquirer story ran in March, several readers sent Mr. Macinnis letters that wished him well and money, totaling about $150. They didn't include return addresses.
“Could you put something in (the article) somehow to thank the people?” Lisa Macinnis says. She and her husband also are grateful for the support they received from family and friends.
Joey Macinnis says he often wonders about what might have been.
“I could be sitting in (jail) right now, doing seven years for something I didn't do,” he says.
Lisa Macinnis doesn't think about that.
“I got him. He's home with me. I'm happy. That's all that matters.”
Another chapter in their lives
JAIL HAUNTS INNOCENT MAN
QUADS THRIVE IN KINDERGARTEN
CRIME VICTIM GETS LETTER
LESBIAN TEEN'S HARD YEAR
MOTHER-DAUGHTER CLOSER
EX-RINGMASTER ON STAGE
TEEN FINDS HER OWN HOME
WINNING BASEBALL TEAM
BEANIE MADNESS SLOWS
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