In a Wednesday news report from Kansas City, Missouri’s KCTV 5, John Calvin tells reporters that he did not pull the trigger killing John Coates in the backyard of a Wyandotte County home 14 years ago. In fact, reporters spoke to the man who admits to doing the deed, Melvin White.
According to the news report, the police arrested both White and Calvin. However, White took a plea deal and served only 54 months.
“I feel bad. I should be doing the time not him. I’m the one who pulled the trigger,” White confesses. “He didn’t know about robbery or killing. He didn’t know about nothing.”
White says the incident was a love triangle over a woman, and he used Calvin as a decoy to knock on Coates’ door. So White recruited Calvin to be that decoy in exchange for drug money.
“I was an addict, you know. I was a drug addict. So my only intention that night was to get some drugs,” Calvin says in a phone interview with reporters.
Now the wrongly accused man is a product of two broken and unfair systems. Calvin is taking the money he is earning from a $10 per hour job to pay for legal fees and his freedom.
