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Stories of those Affected |
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The following stories are taken from "The Faces of Exoneration" section of the Innocence Project website:
Gregory
Gregory was accused and convicted of rape and burglary of the first victim and of the attempted rape of the second victim. He was sentenced to consecutive sentences of seventy years. Gregory contacted the Innocence Project after his appeals failed, asserting his innocence. The Project proceeded to locate, preserve, and secure the release of the hair evidence. The hairs were tested using mitochondrial DNA testing, a relatively new form of DNA testing. Initially, one hair was tested and excluded Gregory as the source. Before agreeing to release Gregory, however, the prosecution insisted that the rest of the hairs be tested. The state had the hairs tested at their own expense. These results of further testing also excluded Gregory.
When he was released in 2000, William Gregory became the first person to be exonerated by mitochondrial testing alone and the first inmate to be exonerated based on DNA testing in Kentucky. He had served seven years of his sentence.
Clarence
Clarence Harrison was exonerated in 2004 after serving more than 17 years in Georgia prisons for a rape he didn’t commit. He had sought DNA testing since 1989 and tests finally proved his innocence after he became a client of the Georgia Innocence Project in 2003.
Frederick
Frederick Daye was accused of rape and robbery. He was wrongly identified by a witness. Eventually, DNA testing was utilized, and Daye was excluded as a possibility. Based on the DNA results and the statement of the other defendant, Daye's conviction was overturned in 1994, after he had endured ten years of incarceration.
Dwayne Dail
On September 4, 1987, a man crawled through the window of a Goldsboro, North Carolina, apartment and raped a 12-year-old girl living there. The girl identified Dwayne Allen Dail as her attacker and he was charged with burglary, rape and other related charged. Hairs collected from the crime scene were submitted for forensic testing and an expert found that Dail’s hairs were microscopically consistent with the evidence from the crime.
Dail reportedly turned down an offer to plead guilty in exchange for three years of probation, and he went to trial in 1989. A jury heard that the victim had identified Dail as her attacker and also that forensic testing had shown the possibility that the hairs at the crime scene had come from him. The jury found him guilty as charged and he was sentenced to two terms of life in prison plus 15 years.
Dail filed numerous appeals over the years, and the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence began working on his case in 2001. Attorneys at the center requested testing on evidence from Dail’s case, but were told that all evidence introduced at Dail’s trial was returned to the Goldsboro Police Department and subsequently destroyed. However, when they asked for a repeated search, officers found a box of evidence, including the victim’s nightgown, that had been saved.
Officials at the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office agreed to send the evidence for DNA testing, and semen was discovered on the victim’s nightgown. The DNA profile from the semen did not match Dail, proving he was not the man who attacked the victim in 1987.
Dwayne Dail was released from custody on August 28, 2007, after a state court judge agreed to vacate his conviction and dismiss all chares against him. He was 39 when released and had served 18 years in prison. In October 2007 Dail received a pardon from Gov. Mike Easley based on his actual innocence.
The following testimony is taken from The Justice Project's website:
In June of 1993, Kirk Bloodsworth's case became the first capital conviction in the United States to be overturned as a result of DNA testing. On July 25, 1984, a nine-year-old girl was found dead in a wooded area. She had been beaten with a rock, sexually assaulted, and strangled. An honorably discharged former Marine and Maryland resident, Bloodsworth was convicted of sexual assault, rape, and first-degree premeditated murder. He was convicted and sentenced to death on March 8, 1985. The ruling was appealed a year later on the grounds that evidence was withheld at trial, and Bloodsworth received a new trial. He was found guilty again and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
After years of fighting for a DNA test, evidence from the crime scene was sent to a lab for testing. Final reports from state and federal labs concluded that Bloodsworth's DNA did not match any of the evidence received for testing. On June 28, 1993, a Baltimore County circuit judge ordered Bloodsworth released from prison due to the results of his DNA test, and in December 1993, Maryland's governor pardoned Bloodsworth.
By the time of his release, Bloodsworth served almost nine years in prison, including two on death row for a crime he did not commit.
Read more...
The following story is taken from The American Lawyer.
Devan Duniver was a little girl who lived in New Philadelphia, Ohio, in the summer of 1998. She was 5 years old, Caucasian, with blond hair and blue eyes. Devan lived in a modest two-story apartment complex with her mother and older brother, and was supposed to enter kindergarten in the fall. She liked it when her mom read books to her, especially Dr. Seuss's One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.
In the summer of 1998, Anthony Harris was a 12-year-old boy who lived with his mother and two brothers in the same apartment complex. Anthony was supposed to enter the seventh grade in the fall. He liked playing with Legos and toy trains and had a favorite stuffed monkey that he brought to sleepovers. He was African American and tall for his age. His teachers considered him polite and well-mannered.
Continue reading "Saving Anthony Harris"
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