When Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy agreed to dismiss murder charges against Davontae Sanford, she cited possible perjury by a lead detective in the case as her reason.

However, Worthy on Tuesday announced her office will not pursue perjury charges against former Detroit Deputy Police Chief James Tolbert, whose morphing statements in 2010 and 2015 led her to call for Sanford's release prison after more than eight years.

Sanford in 2008 pleaded guilty to a quadruple homicide on Runyon in Detroit. Supporters have long claimed Detroit police coerced the then-14-year-old's confession.

Wayne County Circuit Judge Brian Sullivan in early June ruled Sanford was wrongly convicted and ordered his immediate release from prison.

While Worthy hasn't publicly proclaimed Sanford's innocence, she said she has no intention of refiling charges.

Worthy commissioned an independent state police review of Sanford's case in 2015. The findings led Worthy to believe Sanford may have been wrongly convicted.

A crudely drawn diagram of the crime scene showing the placement of the four bodies -- something only the killer could know -- was a key piece of evidence in the initial prosecution and the office's fight to keep Sanford in prison, Worthy said.

Former Flint Police Chief James W. Tolbert in a 2014 Flint Journal file photo

Tolbert, who later became Flint's police chief, testified at a post-conviction hearing in 2010 that he handed Sanford a blank sheet of paper and the teen drew the entire diagram himself.

But, "included in (the state police report) is a recorded interview in which former Deputy Chief James Tolbert contradicts his sworn testimony that Davontae Sanford drew the entire diagram of the crime scene, including the location of the victims' bodies, while being questioned by the police," Worthy said in a statement following Sanford's release.

"This called into question Tolbert's credibility in the case."

Regarding Tolbert being cleared of perjury charges, Worthy issued this statement Tuesday:

"The obvious question is why this office could move to dismiss a case where four people were killed based on James Tolbert's interview with Michigan State Police, but not charge him with perjury? As I have stated, the building blocks of our case were severely undermined by this interview and we requested that the case be dismissed.

"In order to proceed with perjury charges, we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Tolbert's testimony on July 13, 2010, was false. There were only three witnesses to the drawing of the sketch in question. Two of them, Davontae Sanford and James Tolbert are unavailable to us. The third person is Sgt. Michael Russell, and his testimony does not support a perjury charge. The bottom line is that there is an important legal distinction between acting on evidence that undermines a conviction, and proving beyond a reasonable doubt that someone has committed perjury."

Shortly after Sanford's imprisonment in 2008, Vincent Smothers, a suspected hit man with more than a dozen victims, told an attorney he was hired to kill certain people at the Runyon house.

Smothers, 35, will stay in prison until at least 2060, according to Michigan Department of Corrections records. He went to prison in 2010 for eight mostly drug-related homicides, and has 29 active sentences.

Worthy hasn't announced charges against Smothers in the 2008 Runyon Street killings of Brian Dixon, 31, Michael Robinson, 33, Nicole Chapman, 29, and D'Angelo McNoriell.

Detroit police announced they were opening an internal investigation after the Sanford convictions were overturned.

Darnell Earley, Flint's former emergency manager, hired Tolbert to lead Flint's police department in September 2013. Tolbert told MLive he was fired in February 2016, but a specific reason for his ousting hasn't been publicized.

Officials later claimed it was part of government restructuring.

The full statement on Worthy's decision: