After nearly 40 years supporters across the globe remain committed to advocating for Temujin Kensu’s release.
While maintaining hope that he will eventually see freedom, some of Kensu’s staunchest defenders say they face an uphill climb to overcome Michigan politics and obstacles not related to the facts of his innocence, to help Kensu receive justice.
“There is an abundance of corruption in Michigan politics… that keeps Kensu in jail,” says Debbie O’Sullivan of Australia.
After learning about Kensu through an Australian podcast One Minute Remaining, she got so involved that she plans to relocate to the United States this year, to campaign for Kensu’s exoneration.
“I really cared deeply about this case and, over time, have come to care deeply about Temujin as well,” O’Sullivan adds via email. “This is why I am moving from Australia, so I can be better placed to support him.”
Financial restitution that’s due to exonerees, according to Michigan’s Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act, is a factor that O’Sullivan says has hindered Kensu from receiving justice. Based on the law passed in 2017, Kensu would be entitled to about $2 million if he were set free by state conviction integrity unit intervention or similar proceedings.
“They are very worried about the compensation Temujin could be awarded, so they choose to keep him in jail rather than do the right thing,” says O’Sullivan.
In fact, most of Kensu’s core support team expresses a similar belief that non-evidentiary influences are the reason he hasn’t been released in almost four decades.
Jason Flom is a founding board member of the Innocence Project and hosts a podcast, Wrongful Conviction. In August 2021 Flom received a request to investigate Kensu’s case. The following year interviewed Kensu as a guest of the podcast.
“Temujin is one of the craziest cases I have heard, because it is really, really hard to kill somebody from hundreds and hundreds of miles away,” says Flom.
Flom was disgusted by the results of the Michigan CIU’s investigation that found no cause to overturn Kensu’s conviction, despite additional support of Kensu’s alibi at the time of the crime.
“Yeah, somebody in the position of power was so hell-bent on keeping him in prison,” Flom says. “I don’t know who, but somebody that responded in a way that is absolutely bizarre.”
Khaliah Ali, daughter of boxing legend and social justice advocate Muhammad Ali, works with Flom, who is her husband, on many cases, and says Kensu’s is one of the closest to her heart. She met with Kensu at Macomb Correctional Facility about three years ago and describes him as kind and considerate, despite the mistreatment he’s endured in prison.
“The realities of people like Temujin, in prison, are hard when they come and they raid his cell and they throw out his cane, and they take his hearing aids,” says Ali, “just the cruelty that he’s had to endure under these inhumane conditions.”
She adds, “And still, every time we call Temujin he continues to smile, and then every conversation, he says, ‘Please let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.’”
Ali says she met with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s father Richard, who recently died, and that Richard Whitmer believed in Kensu’s innocence.
David Sanders became a founding board member of an organization, Proving Innocence, after learning of Kensu’s case from journalist and private investigator Bill Proctor in 2008.
Along with years of effort to generate awareness of Kensu’s conviction, Sanders has joined direct appeals to the highest levels of Michigan government. Following the CIU’s conclusion, Sanders wrote Attorney General Dana Nessel in 2022, stating in part: “We are aghast and disgusted with the CIU and your decision not to grant justice to a wholly innocent man, Temujin Kensu (aka Fredrick Freeman). This is unconscionable and unacceptable, and a betrayal of your claim the CIU would fight for true justice for the wrongfully convicted.”
Sanders says his position about Kensu’s innocence remain unchanged.
“I think he’s a political prisoner,” Sanders says, adding. “He was really convicted of a murder that he could not have done.”
In concluding his letter to Nessel, Sanders quoted an investigative journalist from NBC: “The question is not Temujin’s actual innocence. That’s obvious. The question is why is he still in prison?”
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