Nick McGuffin

Freedom Day: December 17, 2019

Nick McGuffin was convicted in 2011 of the manslaughter of Leah Freeman in Coquille in Coos County, Oregon in 2000. He served nine years of a 10-year sentence before his conviction was overturned by a judge thanks to the work of the Oregon Innocence Project and others.

A 15-year-old girl named Leah Freeman disappeared in Coquille on the night of June 28, 2000. Her body was discovered at the bottom of a roadside embankment in a remote wooded area outside Coquille five weeks later on August 3, 2000. Nick McGuffin was Leah Freeman’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance. After she vanished, but before her body was found, the Coos County District Attorney convened a grand jury which ultimately did not return an indictment.

Eight years later, Mark Dannels became Police Chief in Coquille and he promised local residents that he would solve the case. A new grand jury was convened and heard testimony in July and August 2010. On August 13, 2010, the ABC News television show 20/20 aired its version of the story of Leah Freeman’s death. On August 24, 2010, Nick McGuffin was arrested and charged with her murder.

The jury acquitted Nick McGuffin of murder but found him guilty of Manslaughter I. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Oregon Innocence Project staff and volunteers worked on Mr. McGuffin’s case for five years from 2014-2019 alongside attorneys from other firms up until his conviction was overturned in November 2019. We dedicated thousands of hours to assisting him in overturning his wrongful conviction, re-investigating the case, testing evidence for DNA that had never been testing, and exploring the work of his original trial team. 

Testing identified an unidentified male's DNA on a critical piece of evidence. Our work revealed serious flaws in the case against Mr. McGuffin including a lack of objective evidence of the cause or mechanism of Leah Freeman’s death, the timeline of the night of her disappearance presented at trial by the State being contradicted by the State’s theory of the crime, the possibility of third-party involvement in her death, and ineffective assistance of trial counsel.