A former Louisville police detective admitted he tampered with evidence and lied to help wrongfully convict 2 men

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A former Louisville police detective admitted he tampered with evidence and lied to help wrongfully convict 2 men
A Minneapolis Police officers unrolls caution tape at a crime scene on June 16, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
  • Former Louisville Police detective Mark Handy admitted to helping wrongfully convict two men.
  • He took a plea deal on Monday and pleaded guilty to perjury and tampering with evidence.
  • The two men he helped convict spent nearly a decade behind bars each.
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A former Louisville Police detective has admitted to tampering with evidence in cases in which innocent men were wrongly put behind bars for nearly a decade each.

Mark Handy took a plea deal on Monday and pleaded guilty to perjury and tampering with evidence, charges that carry a one-year sentence, WAVE 3 reported.

Handy was charged in September 2018, following a WAVE 3 investigation into the convictions of two men.

According to WLKY, Handy's actions as a detective led to the wrongful convictions of Edwin Chandler and Kieth West.

Chandler, who spent nearly a decade in prison for the 1993 murder of Brenda Whitfield, was exonerated after a fingerprint matched another man at the scene of the crime he was accused of.

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In a 2008 re-investigation of Chandler's case, Former Louisville Metro Police Homicide detective Denny Butler found that Handy had lied about evidence and coerced Chandler into falsely confessing, WAVE 3 reported.

West, meanwhile, spent seven years in prison after Handy recorded over a witness recording from the case.

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