Chester Hollman III spent 28 years in prison for a crime he did not commit and he was finally released in July of 2019. Last week, the city of Philadelphia agreed to compensate him with $9.8 million, the second largest settlement in the city’s history.

In his first interview since the settlement, the 49-year-old opened up about where he is today and the hopes for his future.

During an interview on The Clay Cane Show on SiriusXM Urban View, Hollman said about the settlement, “I never want to sound ungrateful or anything like that because I know people are struggling. But, for me, it was more about the closure of it all. This case has been hovering on my back for almost 30 years. So that was the biggest thing for me, it was just being able to settle so I can put this to bed and move on.”

Hollman said his focus is to take care of his family who supported him while he was wrongfully incarcerated. Sadly, his mother passed away in 1999 but his father is still alive.

He also opened up about where he is today, having been a free man for nearly a year and a half.

“You still can't understand how all that happened. How much life is lost… I think that's the most difficult part for me is not letting go of what happened as opposed to my issues that I'm having right now.”

Getting emotional, he continued, “I tried to do the right thing. No matter what I did, it just didn't work out...”

In 1991, Holman was only 21 years old when he was driving through Center City in Philadelphia and was randomly stopped by police. He was accused of robbery and the killing of a University of Pennsylvania student. Due to atrocious police misconduct, Hollman was convicted of second-degree murder and robbery with no DNA evidence or even a murder weapon.

Thanks to the tireless work from The Innocence Project, he was finally released. Lynne M. Abraham, the district attorney at the time of his conviction, said when Hollman was released that she had “no recollection of the case” and declined to comment.

Hollman was aggressively prosecuted by Roger King, a Black prosecutor who had a record of misconduct and once held the record for the most death penalty convictions.

Hollman told Cane about Roger King, who died in 2016 at the age of 72 years old, “When you're in the system, you see these people, you're hoping for someone that looks like you because maybe they'll have an understanding but that just wasn't the case.”

He continued, “It was very discouraging. That was part of my pain as well, seeing that these were Black folks that were actually doing this to me and they weren't trying to seek out the truth.”

Watch the interview below:

Hollman’s story was also featured in the Netflix series The Innocence Files.