Barry Scheck, the co-founder and co-director of the Innocence Project, headlines the project’s website: “We knew that this new DNA technology would not only prove people guilty, but also prove people innocent.” The establishment of CODIS made the DNA database national, which proved pivotal in clearing innocent, convicted people.
In 1989, 2 years after Tommy Lee Andrews became the first person in the US to be convicted by DNA, Gary Dotson became the first person exonerated by it. Convicted in 1979 and sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison, Dotson had been wrongfully imprisoned for the rape of Cathleen Crowell – one that had never happened. Crowell faked cuts and tore her clothing before she went to the police to allege she had been raped. Based solely on her description of “an imaginary perpetrator,” police arrested Dotson.
In court, however, the evidence against him was “augmented by false forensic testimony.” The lab technician, Timothy Dixon, stated that he had found type B blood antigens in Crowell’s underwear. “Because Dotson was a B secretor, and because B secretors comprise only 10% of the white male population, this testimony substantially corroborated Crowell’s identification of Dotson.” (NW University) In addition to Crowell also being a B secretor and thus being able to contribute to the B antigens, people with other blood types (such as the O) and non-secretors could have also contributed to the antigen presence – which means that instead of 10%, over two-thirds of the white male population could have contributed to the bodily fluid found.
While perjured forensic testimony put him away, in 1987, defense attorney Thomas M. Breen decided to use forensics to exonerate him. After Crowell recanted her testimony, DNA testing was ordered by Breen. Though initial tests proved inconclusive due to much of the genetic material having degraded, Breen made use of the newly patented laboratory technique Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which allows the amplification of small amounts of DNA. In 1988, a California forensics lab confirmed that their tests “positively excluded Dotson” from the samples from Crowell, which were instead a match for her ex-boyfriend. (NW) However, it wasn’t until a year later that Dotson’s charges were finally dropped.
DNA evidence has had the most positive connotation to its name primarily because of its exoneration of innocent people on death row. The first was when Kirk Noble Bloodsworth, sentenced to death in 1985 for the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl, was exonerated by DNA testing in 1993.
A former Marine, Bloodsworth was convicted based on the testimony of five witnesses who “placed him either with the victim or near the scene of the crime at the time it was believed to have occurred.” He was tried again after it was uncovered that the prosecution had withheld evidence illegally, but he was convicted again. After reading in jail about DNA fingerprinting being used to solve the Ashworth murder and the rise of PCR testing, Bloodsworth pushed to have DNA fingerprint evidence used in his case. At first, he was informed that the semen samples from the victim’s underwear were destroyed, but after being located in a judge’s chamber, the DNA tests on them, performed by the pioneer of PCR himself, Edward Blake, “excluded [him] 100% as the person responsible.” (BBC News)
In 2002, Paula Gray became the first woman exonerated by DNA testing, after being convicted 24 years prior for the murder of a couple. She alleged she confessed to the crime she didn’t know anything about because “she had been drugged and that the police walked her around the crime scene and told her what to say.” Hers was another case of false confession by the intellectually challenged, “who often are eager to please and easily misled by authorities.” (ACLU) Instead of clearing her after she later recanted her story, she was given an additional charge of perjury. She and the 3 other innocent male defendants were charged with murder, with one of the men sentenced to death row too. With the lack of credible evidence due to “evolving testimony” by alleged witnesses, DNA testing was conducted on the victims, establishing the innocence of all 4.
In 2007, Larry Fuller, a decorated Vietnam veteran, became the first person exonerated due to Y-STR DNA testing, after spending 20 years in prison. The Y chromosome is unique to males and is inherited from the father, allowing isolation of the Y chromosome to determine a match based on paternal lineage. When low amounts of male DNA are present in a “high background of female DNA,” as is the case in many sexual assault cases, Y-STR testing can help establish the identity of the male contributor or contributors. (TF) Fuller was convicted of rape in 1981, but was released after Y-DNA testing on the rape kit of the victim proved his innocence.
The Innocence Project states that to date in the US, 375 people have been exonerated by DNA testing, 21 of whom were on death row. 100 people were exonerated just from 2007 to 2012, and the latest exoneree by DNA testing: October 29th, 2022, when Maurice Hastings was freed after 38 years in prison.
Sources:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/dna-helps-free-innocent-california-man-spent-15/story?id=68986489
https://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/il/gary-dotson.html
https://innocenceproject.org/dna-revolutionary-role-freedom/
https://www.aclu.org/other/dna-testing-and-death-penalty
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3032
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8243991.stm
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3224
https://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/wrongfulconvictions/exonerations/il/paula-gray.html
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3433
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