Wrongly convicted New York man dies from lung cancer 4 months after getting $7.5M from state

PENNELLVILLE, N.Y. – A central New York man who received $7.5 million for being wrongfully imprisoned for nine years has died of lung cancer.

Jerry Gristwood tells The Post-Standard of Syracuse (http://bit.ly/1Igx2zl) that his 48-year-old brother, Dan, died Saturday at a Syracuse hospital.

In May 2013, a state Court of Claims judge awarded the Pennellville resident $5.5 million for being wrongfully convicted of trying to kill his wife. In July, a state appeals court in Rochester upheld the award, which had increased to $7.5 million with interest by the time it was paid in September.

A judge found that state troopers coerced Gristwood into falsely confessing to attacking his wife with a hammer inside their suburban Syracuse home in 1996.

The real attacker came forward in 2003 and confessed.

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Information from: The Post-Standard, http://www.syracuse.com