Gordon Cordeiro, free after 30 years thanks to new DNA evidence, struggles to adopt to modern times

A man whose conviction for a 1994 murder was overturned on new DNA evidence says he’s having a hard time adjusting to today’s hyper-connected world after spending the past 30 years behind bars.

“Everybody is looking at their phones,” Gordon Cordeiro, 51, said in a Zoom interview shortly after his recent release from the Maui Community Correctional Center in Hawaii.

Cordeiro, who went to prison in 1994 for the slaying of Timothy Blaisdell during a drug deal gone bad on Maui, made it his first order of business when getting out to visit the grave of his mother, Paulette, who died at age 49 of ALS the same year he was incarcerated.

“Thanks for looking over me. Keeping me safe,” he said, addressing his late mom while visiting her final resting place, noting that she had frequently been on his mind during his prison stint.

He also enjoyed a steak dinner in Kahului and later visited the graves of other relatives. He said he was planning to take a trip to Costco next to luxuriate in his newfound freedom.

Despite struggling to come to terms with the ubiquity of cell phones that swept the globe while he was in prison, he said he owes technology a debt of gratitude for his release, telling The Associated Press, “Thank God for new DNA.

“Technology is awesome,” Cordeiro said.

According to court documents filed by Cordeiro’s lawyers, he was wrongfully convicted in part because police relied upon four jailhouse informants motivated by promises of reduced sentences and fabricated murder-for-hire plots.

After Cordeiro’s conviction, new testing on physical evidence from the scene excluded him as the source of DNA on Blaisdell’s body and other crime-scene items, the Hawaii Innocence Project said. A DNA profile of an unidentified person also was found on the inside pockets of Blaisdell’s jeans.

Cordeiro, who was 22 at the time of the killing, has maintained his innocence since his trial.

Kenneth Lawson, co-director of the Hawaii Innocence Project nonprofit, said cops “botched this case from the beginning,” which put Cordeiro and his family through a “30-year nightmare and a miscarriage of justice.”