Woman acquitted of killing Austin store owner after 8 years in prison

A woman has been acquitted of a 2009 murder in the West Side Austin neighborhood—after she’d already spent eight years in prison for the crime.

Kerry Masterson, now 31, was convicted in 2011 of the murder of 55-year-old of Michael Norton, according to the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

Norton, longtime owner of Norton’s Sweet Shop, was found in the back of his convenience store at Cicero and North on May 14, 2009, with a bullet wound to the back of the head, and his hands and feet bound, the Sun-Times previously reported.

The investigation led to the arrest of a man and woman, Beatrice Rosado and Elvin Payton, who had lived in an apartment above Norton’s store until he evicted them because of gang and drug activity, according to the center.

Witnesses reported seeing a skinny Hispanic man fleeing the crime scene. Police initially believed that was a third person, who committed the crime with the arrested couple.

One eyewitness identified a Hispanic male as the suspect in a photo array, but it was later determined he was out of the state at the time.

The couple later claimed that Masterson was also involved, and police ended their search for a male suspect and eyewitnesses only viewed female lineups from that point forward.

At her 2011 trial, Masterson’s request to call an eyewitness identification expert was rejected by the judge, according to the center.

Despite the fact that she was neither a man, nor “skinny,” a jury found Masterson guilty of first-degree murder and the judge sentenced her to 58 years in prison.

In 2014, the Center on Wrongful Convictions picked up Masterson’s case, one of the first accepted by the Center’s Women’s Project.

The appellate court granted Masterson a new trial based on the erroneous exclusion of expert testimony on eyewitness identifications at her first trial, according to the center.

Her second jury trial started on Oct. 27, and an expert witness explained how the conditions under which the eyewitnesses saw the perpetrator and the manner in which the lineups were conducted increased the risk of mistaken identification.

Masterson also testified she was not involved in any way and was trying to fix her truck, which was parked nearby, at the time of the murder, according to the center.

Rosado and Payton, who both pleaded guilty to the murder years ago, also testified that they lied to the police in implicating Masterson in order to mitigate their own punishment, according to the center. They would have faced violent gang retaliation had they admitted the third suspect was actually a male gang member.

Masterson was found not guilty by the jury after less than three hours of deliberation on Thursday.

Rosado, now 32, is serving a 22-year sentence at the Logan Correctional Center, according to Illinois Department of Corrections records. Payton, now 34, is serving a 47-year sentence at the Menard Correctional Center.