An 'open and shut case' vs. an innocent man: Daniel Gristwood was imprisoned 9 years for beating his wife, but N.Y. state police had it wrong

By John O'Brien / The Post-Standard The Post-Standard
Syracuse.com
Oct. 17, 2011

Mastho Davis always knew.

He knew that in January 1996 he wandered into a stranger’s apartment in Clay and pounded Christina Gristwood in the head three times with a hammer he found on the counter. He left her brain-damaged and paralyzed on one side.

Seven years later, he tried to confess to Onondaga County jail deputies while he was held on a different assault. Later, he tried to admit in open court that he beat Gristwood, but the judge kept resisting the confession.

Davis was crazed and violent, but he had a conscience. In August 2003, he tried again. He walked into the Syracuse Police Department late one night and again told officers he’d beaten a woman with a hammer in 1996.

It’d be another two years before a judge finally accepted what Davis knew all along.

But for all those years, someone else knew the truth, too.

Christina’s husband, Daniel Gristwood, seethed in prison. A judge, jury and prosecutor had sent him there for the crime, persuaded by a false confession coerced by state police investigators.

“I’ve lost everything in my life – my wife, my children, my job, my freedom, everything,” Daniel Gristwood wrote in a letter from prison. “Why am I being railroaded like this?”

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