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Both Arthur Lee Whitfield and Julius Ruffin are men accused of rape in Virginia who were convicted and subsequently exonerated.
On August 14, 1981, Arthur Lee Whitfield was accused of the rape of a woman in Norfolk, Virginia. Twenty five years ago, the woman identified Whitfield as her attacker, describing him as a tall, muscular black, light skinned with hazel eyes (Washington). This description was also used to identify an attacker from another rape that occurred earlier that night. Whitfield was tried and convicted for these two rapes and sentenced to 63 years (Washington).
Whitfield was released by Virginia authorities in August 2004, when a Norfolk prosecutor said DNA evidence proved Whitfield did not commit the two rapes. Whitfield had already served 22 years for the rapes that DNA proved he did not commit (Innocence Project).
The woman in the alleged attack does not agree with the DNA testing, saying she knew who she saw. The victim questions state authorities on the profile of Mary Jane Burton, the former crime lab scientist whose work has sparked a review of hundreds of cases and exoneration from the former governor, Mark Warner (Isadora). Whitfield was released on parole, but is trying to get a pardon from the Virginia governor, Tim Kaine. Since the Virginia Supreme Court did not declare him innocent (Isadora), if Whitfield does not get his record cleared, he will be a registered sex offender for life.
On December 6, 1981, Julius Ruffin was accused of raping, sodomizing, and robbing a woman in her home. The victim looked for a black male and identified Ruffin as her attacker, though the description did not match up (Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project). Ruffin is 6'1" (187 cm), with light skin, and two distinguishable gold teeth and facial hair. She identified her attacker as 5'8" (174 cm) with dark skin. On October 1, 1982, he ended being sentenced to life in prison. [1]
In June 2002, Virginia courts passed a law that allowed felons to petition the courts for DNA testing. On February 13 of the following year Ruffin, was released by DNA testing. Ruffin was pardoned by the former governor of Virginia and given $1.5 million in compensation (Innocence Project).
These cases were revisited for two reasons. For one their lawyers never gave up fighting for them. Second the Virginia courts passed the law to let felons petition for DNA testing. Since both of these things were done to a great extent the cases were reopened and retested. It proved that they were innocent of the charges after all.
The new evidence this brought out was that the former crime lab scientist had kept the DNA in her notebook which allegedly could have caused contamination and getting the real rapist out of trouble and the innocent ones in trouble.
Although the real criminal has been convicted, only one of the 'convicts' has had his name totally cleared. Julius Ruffin received $1.5 million in compensation and has had his name completely erased from the registered sex offender list and his record has been cleared of the crimes (Makron). However, Arthur Lee Whitfield is still on the registered sex offender list, has yet to receive a pardon from the Governor of Virginia, and no verdict or decision has been made (Makron).
Once the actual rapist was found, both Ruffin and Whitfield were exonerated. Aaron Doxie III, the real perpetrator was convicted for unrelated rapes, and will not be tried for the Virginia rapes because the cases are too cold and much of the evidence has been destroyed (Washington). Also, both of the women insist that Ruffin and Whitfield, respectively, are their attackers.
Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. The group cites various studies estimating that in the United States between 2.3% and 10% of all prisoners are innocent. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld who gained national attention in the mid-1990s as part of the "Dream Team" of lawyers who formed part of the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case.
Peter J. Neufeld is an American lawyer, cofounder, with Barry Scheck, of the Innocence Project, and a founding partner in the civil rights law firm Neufeld Scheck & Brustin. Starting from his earliest years as an attorney representing clients at New York's Legal Aid Society, and teaching trial advocacy at Fordham School of Law from 1988 to 1991, he has focused on civil rights and the intersection of science and criminal justice.
Roger Keith Coleman was a convicted murderer and rapist from Grundy, Virginia, USA, who was executed for the rape and murder in March 1981 of his sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy. That day, he had been laid off from work.
Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is a former Maryland waterman and the first American sentenced to death to be exonerated post-conviction by DNA testing.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by opponents of capital punishment, while proponents say that the argument of innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of the death penalty.
Clarence Harrison was wrongly convicted in 1987 for the kidnapping, rape and robbery of a 25-year-old-woman in Decatur, Georgia. He is the first person exonerated through the work of the Georgia Innocence Project.
The Georgia Innocence Project is a non-profit corporation based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Its mission "is to free the wrongly prosecuted through DNA testing, to advance practices that minimize the chances that others suffer the same fate, to educate the public that wrongful convictions are not rare or isolated events, and to help the exonerated rebuild their lives."
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.
Johnny Briscoe is an American man falsely convicted of rape and other crimes and subsequently exonerated by DNA evidence.
Timothy Brian Cole was an American military veteran and a Texas Tech University student wrongfully convicted of raping a fellow student in 1985.
Earl Washington Jr. is a former Virginia death-row inmate, who was fully exonerated of murder charges against him in 2000. He had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the 1982 rape and murder of Rebecca Lyn Williams in Culpeper, Virginia. Washington has an IQ estimated at 69, which classifies him as intellectually disabled. He was coerced into confessing to the crime when arrested on an unrelated charge a year later. He narrowly escaped being executed in 1985 and 1994.
Cornelius Dupree Jr. is an American who was declared innocent of a 1980 conviction for aggravated robbery, which was alleged to have been committed during a rape in 1979. He was paroled in July 2010 after serving 30 years of a 75-year prison sentence in Texas. Prosecutors cleared him of the crime after a test of his DNA profile did not match traces of semen evidence from the case. Dupree, who was represented by the Innocence Project, spent more time in prison in Texas than any other inmate who was eventually exonerated by DNA evidence.
The 'Teardrop' rapist is a moniker for an unidentified rapist responsible for 35 sexual assaults on women, including minors, in Los Angeles, California. The assaults began in 1996 and continued through 2012. He is believed to be a Hispanic male with a light complexion, and received his nickname from at least one teardrop tattoo under his eye.
Thomas Haynesworth is a resident of Richmond, Virginia, who served 27 years in state prison as a result of four wrongful convictions for crimes for which he was exonerated in 2011.
Daniel Ken Holtzclaw is a former police officer in the United States. He was convicted in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy, and other sexual charges while working for the Oklahoma City Police Department.
The Nebraska Innocence Project was a member organization Nebraska-based chapter of a U.S non-profit organization called the Innocence Project, located in Omaha, Nebraska. In 2019, the Nebraska Innocence Project folded into the Midwest Innocence Project. The Midwest Innocence Project's mission is to educate about, advocate for, and obtain and support the exoneration and release of wrongfully convicted people in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. The Nebraska chapter was founded in 2005 by a group of volunteers who were inspired by the work of Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, founders of the Innocence Project in 1992. The Midwest Innocence Project (MIP) was founded in 2001 through the UMKC School of Law and is also part of the national Innocence Network.
Michael "Mike" Semanchik is Managing Attorney at the California Innocence Project (CIP). As part of his work with CIP, he has been involved in many cases involving the exoneration of previously-convicted prisoners, working closely with the organization's director, Justin Brooks, and also preparing petitions for many of CIP's clients. After working at CIP while still a law student at California Western School of Law, following graduation in 2010 he became an investigator and then a staff attorney there.
Alissa Leanne Bjerkhoel is an American litigation coordinator at the California Innocence Project (CIP), a law school clinic that investigates cases of factual innocence while training law students. Bjerkhoel was born in Truckee, California, and later graduated from California Western School of Law (CWSL) after previously obtaining a B.A. degree She has been an attorney with CIP since 2008. Bjerkhoel has served as counsel for CIP on numerous criminal cases, and achieved the legal exoneration of a number of convicted prisoners. Bjerkhoel serves as CIP's in-house DNA expert and also serves as a panel attorney with the nonprofit law firms Appellate Defenders, Inc. (ADI) and Sixth District Appellate Program (SDAP). She is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Bjerkhoel has won a number of awards.