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Man Wrongly Convicted of Rape Freed
Tue Aug 24, 6:55 PM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
NORFOLK, Va. - A man who served nearly 22 years in prison for two rapes he did not commit has been released from prison based on new testing of DNA evidence.
"Thank God for DNA," a soft-spoken Arthur Lee Whitfield said Tuesday, a day after being released from prison and sent home to his family in Norfolk.
Whitfield, 49, was convicted in 1982 of two rapes that occurred within 45 minutes on Aug. 14, 1981. Each woman was walking from her car to her apartment in the evening when attacked. Both testified that Whitfield was the attacker.
But Commonwealth's Attorney John R. Doyle III concluded Whitfield did not commit the crimes, citing DNA samples collected for his trial that were kept at the state lab in Richmond. The samples came from the files of a scientist whose practice of saving evidence exonerated another Norfolk man last year of a 1981 rape conviction.
In the Whitfield case, Doyle said the samples point to a man who is serving a life sentence for an unrelated rape.
Whitfield received a total sentence of 63 years, becoming eligible for parole in 1991. His mandatory parole date was 2015.
Whitfield said he prayed a lot while in prison, "so I didn't really lose hope." He said he stayed active, earning his GED and developing skills such as brick masonry.
The 2001 Virginia General Assembly changed a state law that restricted inmates' ability to submit DNA evidence to prove their innocence. In October 2003, acting as his own lawyer, Whitfield filed a petition for DNA analysis of the evidence from his trial.
At the time of the trial, DNA testing was not available, although state scientists conducted forensic analysis on the samples taken from the victims and Whitfield.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...040824/ap_on_re_us/wrongly_convicted_virginia
Tue Aug 24, 6:55 PM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
NORFOLK, Va. - A man who served nearly 22 years in prison for two rapes he did not commit has been released from prison based on new testing of DNA evidence.
"Thank God for DNA," a soft-spoken Arthur Lee Whitfield said Tuesday, a day after being released from prison and sent home to his family in Norfolk.
Whitfield, 49, was convicted in 1982 of two rapes that occurred within 45 minutes on Aug. 14, 1981. Each woman was walking from her car to her apartment in the evening when attacked. Both testified that Whitfield was the attacker.
But Commonwealth's Attorney John R. Doyle III concluded Whitfield did not commit the crimes, citing DNA samples collected for his trial that were kept at the state lab in Richmond. The samples came from the files of a scientist whose practice of saving evidence exonerated another Norfolk man last year of a 1981 rape conviction.
In the Whitfield case, Doyle said the samples point to a man who is serving a life sentence for an unrelated rape.
Whitfield received a total sentence of 63 years, becoming eligible for parole in 1991. His mandatory parole date was 2015.
Whitfield said he prayed a lot while in prison, "so I didn't really lose hope." He said he stayed active, earning his GED and developing skills such as brick masonry.
The 2001 Virginia General Assembly changed a state law that restricted inmates' ability to submit DNA evidence to prove their innocence. In October 2003, acting as his own lawyer, Whitfield filed a petition for DNA analysis of the evidence from his trial.
At the time of the trial, DNA testing was not available, although state scientists conducted forensic analysis on the samples taken from the victims and Whitfield.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...040824/ap_on_re_us/wrongly_convicted_virginia
