Lawyers representing Krishna Maharaj, a British businessman who has spent the past 27 years in a Florida prison for a double murder that they say he did not commit, released on Friday details of the 53 witnesses and 498 documents they plan to call on in the hope of persuading a judge to order a retrial.



Next Wednesday, the 11th judicial circuit court of Florida in Miami will set a date for a full evidentiary hearing into the Maharaj case. The hearing will constitute his greatest chance in almost three decades to prove his innocence for the murders of his business partner Derrick Moo Young and Young’s son Duane in the Dupont Plaza hotel in Miami on 16 October 1986.

Maharaj, 75, was sentenced to death in 1987, and though he was taken off death row in 2002 he was resentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently held in a prison in south Florida.

The newly released documents underline the massive case for exoneration that has been built up by Maharaj’s lawyers. One of them, Clive Stafford Smith of the legal support group Reprieve, who has written a book on the case, The Injustice System: A Murder in Miami and a Trial Gone Wrong, told the Guardian: “Kris Maharaj is so patently innocent that it is unimaginable to me that the state of Florida does not let him go. It is a very sad day when the government desperately wants to keep the wrong person in prison, such that they will not even investigate who the real killers are.”

In his bid for a retrial, the Trinidad-born Maharaj asserts that he was framed as the murderer to help cover up the involvement of Colombian drug cartels in the killings. The prisoner will present the court with evidence that the victims had been laundering huge sums for the Medellin drug cartel.

Among the witnesses to be called at the evidentiary hearing will be six people who can testify that Maharaj was 30 miles away from the Dupont Plaza hotel when the murders happened. Further testimony will be provided alleging that another named individual carried out the killings, and illuminating the motive for him doing so.

Other witnesses will be called to support allegations of perjury by key state witnesses at Maharaj’s trial.

The newly disclosed list of witnesses the lawyers intend to call at the full evidentiary hearing also includes several investigators and attorneys involved in the case, fingerprint experts and former Miami police officers. Among the pile of documents to be presented are some allegedly demonstrating drug dealing and money laundering by the Youngs and records from the hotel.

The case is being considered by Judge William Thomas. Ordering a full evidentiary hearing on 24 April, he stated that Maharaj would be granted a new trial if he could persuade the court that the new evidence that will be presented at the full hearing was of “such nature that it would probably produce an acquittal on retrial”.

Lawyers for the state have claimed much of the new material is hearsay and inadmissible in any new trial. The judge said he would take a view on admissibility at the evidentiary hearing.