KANSAS CITY, Miss. — Attorneys are requesting that a new grand jury be impaneled to re-investigate the deaths of six Kansas City firefighters.
Attorneys Cheryl Pilate and Laura O’Sullivan, the original attorneys for the defendants, who they say were “wrongfully convicted” for the deaths, have new developments to present, according to the Kansas City Star.
A US Department of Justice investigation prompted by the newspaper found that others besides the convicted defendants were also involved in the explosion that killed the six firefighters.
“Several newly developed pieces of information, not previously known to the prosecution,” suggests other people that have yet to be prosecuted may have been involved in the explosion, the investigation said.
Officials say the new evidence does not exonerate the five people that have already been convicted for the arson. It is unclear why the defendants, having already served 17 years of their life sentence, did not say there were other accomplices.
The attorneys say the new evidence in hand will point “completely away from those defendants and towards others who were not adequately investigated.”
Pilate and O’Sullivan, along with their organization, the Midwest Innocence Project, are set to reveal their new information later Friday.