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Man released after serving 27 years for a rape he didn't commit

Posted Friday, Jul. 30, 2010

By JUAN A. LOZANO

The Associated Press

HOUSTON -- Michael Anthony Green, who was imprisoned for 27 years for a rape he didn't commit, walked out of jail a free man Friday and into the arms of about 20 relatives.

"Live life," Green said, when asked what he is going to do now.

Green, 44, was released after the Harris County district attorney's office reopened his case, and new DNA tests it commissioned showed that he did not commit the 1983 rape of a woman who had been abducted.

During a court hearing, a judge ordered that Green be released on $500 bail, allowing him to be free while the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals makes a final ruling on his innocence.

Asked what kept him going the last 27 years, Green said that, in part, it was his anger.

"I took and channeled my anger into studying the law," said Green, clutching a photograph of his mother, who died while he was in prison. "That's how I lived, day by day ... doing what I did. Get up in the law, try to find me a way out."

Some of that anger evidently erupted Thursday when Green was initially to be freed. He became angry that he was put in handcuffs and leg restraints one final time as he was taken from the Harris County Jail to the courthouse, said his attorney, Bob Wicoff. Green said he got upset because one of the deputies escorting him tightened his handcuffs and threatened him.

The judge ordered Green to stay in jail one more night.

Wicoff called it a misunderstanding but said Green was justified in his anger.

Green entered prison at age 18. Some of the nieces and nephews who greeted him Friday weren't born when he was locked up.

While in prison, Green said, he didn't give up hope, writing to state lawmakers, the Harris County district attorney and others, proclaiming his innocence and asking that his case be reviewed.

Review team examined case

In 1983, four men abducted a woman from a pay telephone in north Houston, taking her to a remote location, where three of them raped her. The men drove off, leaving the woman there, and were later chased by police. The men abandoned their car and fled on foot. Green was detained that night as he walked in the area.

The victim did not identify Green in a lineup but later picked him out of a photo lineup as one of her attackers.

Green was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to 75 years in prison. He was the only person convicted in the case.

After District Attorney Pat Lykos was elected in 2008, she formed the Post-Conviction Review Section, and it chose Green's case as one of the first to look at. The review team found the only remaining evidence in the case -- clothing worn by the woman -- and had it tested. The results excluded Green.

Authorities were able to identify the four men who abducted the women. But because the statute of limitations on the rape has run out, they cannot be prosecuted.

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/30/2374349/man-released-after-serving-27.html#ixzz0vNQr2Wiq

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Look on the bright side. He was eight years luckier than this guy:

Man released after 35 years wrongful imprisonment

Saturday, 19 December 2009

The release of a Florida man after 35 years in prison for a rape he did not commit is setting off a fresh wave of self-examination by the legal profession in America about the dangers of faulty testimony.

James Bain, 54, was released at a court hearing in Bartow, in central Florida, on Thursday after DNA tests showed he could not have committed the rape of a nine-year-old boy for which he was imprisoned in 1974. Of the 246 inmates across the US who have been exonerated by DNA testing since it first became available, none has been in prison longer than Mr Bain. He lost two-thirds of life to the drudgery and privations of prison.

At his mother's home in Tampa yesterday savouring his freedom as well as some of the marvels of modern living he has never had access to before, including cell phones, Mr Bain has so far refused to express bitterness over his experience. "I can't be angry," he said. "People had a job to do back then. It's just sad the way the outcome was."

With greying hair and beard, Mr Bain was 19 when he was convicted. After new laws in 2001 made it possible for prisoners in Florida to turn to DNA testing to try to prove their innocence, he filed motions four times for testing in his case, only be to denied each time. He was assisted in his fifth attempt by the Innocence Project of Florida.

It was drama until the last moment. Minutes before Thursday's hearing, results from the state laboratories came in corroborating the results of Innocence Project tests that the DNA on the victim's underwear did not match that of Mr Bain. "You are a free man," Circuit Judge James Yancey declared. "Congratulations."

more at link, including

Freed by genetics: Other miscarriages of justice

*In 1985, David Vasquez was convicted of the sexual assault and murder of a woman in Virginia. Despite his limited mental capacity, his so-called "confession" was used as evidence, alongside a hair comparison. But four years later, a DNA test pointed the finger at another man, exonerating Vasquez � who became the first man in the world to have a sentence overturned thanks to the use of DNA evidence.

*Sean Hodgson served 27 years in jail for the 1979 rape and murder of Teresa De Simone in Southampton, largely on the basis of a spurious confession. But Hodgson, a compulsive liar, had made the whole thing up. Earlier this year DNA evidence proved it, and he was freed � becoming the longest-serving prisoner in Britain to have their sentence overturned. He got a discharge payment of �46.

*This week Donald Eugene Gates, a 58-year-old who had served 28 years in prison, was cleared of a 1981 rape and murder with the conviction at last quashed � thanks to a DNA test � by the same judge who had presided over his original trial. "I feel beautiful," he said, boarding a bus home to Ohio from his Arizona prison. "I'm going to go back to my family and start my life over."