DECATUR, Georgia (AP) -- A man who spent 17 years in prison for the 1986 rape, kidnapping and robbery of a hospital worker was freed Tuesday after DNA evidence cleared him.
Clarence Harrison, 44, was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 on charges of sexually assaulting the woman as she waited for a bus.
A new DNA test of the rape kit used as evidence in the case showed Harrison did not commit the rape.
A motion for a new trial was filed on Harrison's behalf last week by lawyers from the Georgia Innocence Project; DeKalb County prosecutors did not object.
Judge Cynthia Becker granted the request Tuesday -- and then dismissed the charges.
"All we know for sure is the culprit is not Mr. Harrison, " said John Petrey, chief assistant district attorney.
The courtroom erupted into applause and tears after the ruling.
"I think I had given up years ago," Harrison said outside the courthouse. "I think God just carried me on through it."
Harrison wouldn't say whether he would seek compensation for the time he spent in prison, but he said he wasn't bitter. His friends said Harrison wants to focus on finding a job and getting married before considering his next legal step.
Prosecutors had worked with the Georgia Innocence Project on Harrison's case since Harrison wrote the group in February 2003.
The original case against Harrison hinged on the victim's testimony and evidence of seminal fluid. However, crime labs testing the physical evidence at the time could only narrow the field to 88 percent of all men.
Though Harrison's lawyers appealed, a private lab determined evidence was unsuitable for further DNA analysis.
According to a police report, the 25-year-old victim, who worked at Grady Memorial Hospital, was standing at a bus stop when a man walked up, struck her in the face and said, "If you scream, I'll kill you right here." He walked her to a wooded area and repeatedly raped and sodomized her, the report said.
The attacker took her money and watch and knocked out two front teeth.
The woman initially identified Harrison from a photographic lineup and later identified him at the trial.
Lets just pick a black man out of the book and say he did it. Wasted 17 years of a man's life....how could you even put a price tag on that?
Since he gave no indication he was brutalized, it would be pretty easy to put a price on it. Not really relevant though, since unless the State of Geogia has waived it, it (like all States) is immune from liability for actions where it is conducting State business. Some States (California among them) allow innocent former convits to file for a statutorially limited per diem for their time spent in incarceration. I have no idea if Georgia is such a state.
If he could extablish intent AND if the statue of limitation has not run (it almost certainly has), he could sue the witness/victim of rth false identification and purjery. Besides it was very likely just a mistake. Eyewitness testimony is similtaniously the most unrealiable and the most powerful.
Most interesting to me, however, is the source of this post. I am not sure how you can be so agast at this and at the same time support the PATRIOT Act, Ashcroft and Bush. Things like this are increasingly more likely to happen in the atmosphere of fear propagated by Bush and Ashcroft and more likely as our civil liberties are erroded by Acts such as PATRIOT. If you are going to be supportive of the administation and its "war" against terrorism, you need to get comfortable with innocent people increasingly falling victim to "law enforcement."
/shrug. The connections are obvious. You are either an idiot and cannot see them or are chosing the non-sequiter as a clumsy tool to deflect critism. I suspect the latter, but if you are in fact an idiot, just say so and I'll baby step you through it.
This case had zero to do with the Patriot act, why you chose to even start a flame war by bringing up such a controversial topic is beyond me. For the record I agree with you, but this flame was in bad taste imo.
Let's see if she can identify the rapists in jail.
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all. - Douglas Adams
The blame really does not fall with the victim. Its with our system of police lineups and in court witness identifications. They are unreliable at best. At their worst, the police set up the lineups so that victims are likely to pick the person the police arrested then later in court, the witnesses *think* they are IDing their assailents, when in fact they are just IDing the guy they saw in the lineup, or in many cases, just the guy that happens to be sitting a the defendant's table. Then, juries don't get it. Eyewitness testimony is the most powerful testimony there is outside of a confession.
If there is someone to blame (and there is, imo) its the police and prosecutors who know very well about the reliability of this sort of evidence, yet continue to frabricate it because it leads to convictions. They reach the conclusion that someoen is guily and they know what sorts of evidence a jury is most likely to respond to - then they go make that evidence.
Wouldn't it be better for him to just rape her to get his 17 years worth?
"There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships." -Theodore Roosevelt
