The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. On the night of the attack, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.
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 1% 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.
A rape kit or rape test kit is a package of items used by medical personnel for gathering and preserving physical evidence following an allegation of sexual assault. The evidence collected from the victim can aid the criminal rape investigation and the prosecution of a suspected assailant. DNA evidence can have tremendous utility for sexual assault investigations and prosecution by identifying offenders, revealing serial offenders through DNA matches across cases, and exonerating those who have been wrongly accused.
The teardrop tattoo or tear tattoo is a symbolic tattoo of a tear that is placed underneath the eye. The teardrop is one of the most widely recognised prison tattoos and has various meanings.
Chester Dewayne Turner is an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death for sexually assaulting and murdering fourteen women and an unborn baby in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998.
Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. is an American serial killer, serial rapist, burglar, peeping tom, former police officer, and former mechanic who committed at least 13 murders, 51 rapes, and 120 burglaries across California between 1974 and 1986. He is responsible for three known separate crime sprees throughout the state, each of which spawned a different nickname in the press, before it became evident that they were committed by the same person.
Mark Goudeau is an American serial killer, kidnapper, thief and rapist. Goudeau terrorized victims in the Phoenix metro area between August 2005 and June 2006; coincidentally, Goudeau was active at the same time as two other Phoenix serial killers, jointly known as the "Serial Shooter.”
Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person who is incapable of giving valid consent, such as one who is unconscious, incapacitated, has an intellectual disability, or is below the legal age of consent. The term rape is sometimes used interchangeably with the term sexual assault.
Richard Alexander is an Indiana man who was wrongfully convicted of rape and later exonerated by DNA evidence. Years later, on September 17, 2020, Alexander was charged with the murder of Catherine Minix, who was found stabbed to death. Minix had previously filed a protective order against Alexander for domestic violence.
Altemio C. Sanchez, also known as the Bike Path Rapist, was a Puerto Rican serial killer who is known to have raped and murdered at least three women, and raped at least 9 to 15 girls and women in and around Buffalo, New York, during a 31-year span from 1975, though perhaps earlier, to 2006. He was apprehended in 2007 through DNA evidence and sentenced to 75 years-to-life, serving 16 years before dying from apparent suicide in 2023.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
FamilyTreeDNA is a division of Gene by Gene, a commercial genetic testing company based in Houston, Texas. FamilyTreeDNA offers analysis of autosomal DNA, Y-DNA, and mitochondrial DNA to individuals for genealogical purpose. With a database of more than two million records, it is the most popular company worldwide for Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA, and the fourth most popular for autosomal DNA. In Europe, it is the most common also for autosomal DNA. FamilyTreeDNA as a division of Gene by Gene were acquired by MYDNA, Inc., an Australian company, in January 2021.
Brianna Zunino Denison was a college student who was abducted on January 20, 2008, from a friend's house in Reno, Nevada. Her body was discovered on February 15, 2008, in a field near a Reno business park after being raped and murdered. A man named James Biela was convicted of the murder.
A serial rapist is someone who commits multiple rapes, whether with multiple victims or a single victim repeatedly over a period of time. Some serial rapists target children. The terms sexual predator, repeat rape and multiple offending can also be used to describe the activities of those who commit a number of consecutive rapes, but remain unprosecuted when self-reported in research. Others will commit their assaults in prisons. In some instances, a group of serial rapists will work together. These rapists can have a pattern of behavior that is sometimes used to predict their activities and aid in their arrest and conviction. Serial rapists also differ from one time offenders because "serial rapists more often involved kidnapping, verbally and physically threatening the victims, and using or threatening the use of weapons."
John Floyd Thomas Jr. is an American serial killer, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murders of seven women in the Los Angeles area during the 1970s and 1980s. Police suspect Thomas committed 10 to 15 more murders.
Mark Wayne Rathbun, better known as the Belmont Shore Rapist, is an American serial rapist who was active on the west coast of the United States during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Between 1997 and 2002, Rathbun committed at least fourteen rapes in Los Angeles County and Orange County, California. Many of Rathbun's attacks were committed in the Belmont Shore district of Long Beach, California, hence his nickname. In addition to striking in Long Beach, Rathbun was also active in the cities of Huntington Beach and Los Alamitos.
Rape investigation is the procedure to gather facts about a suspected rape, including forensic identification of a perpetrator, type of rape and other details.
The California Innocence Project is a non-profit based at California Western School of Law in San Diego, California, United States, which provides pro bono legal services to individuals who maintain their factual innocence of crime(s) for which they have been convicted. It is an independent chapter of the Innocence Project. Its mission is to exonerate wrongly convicted inmates through the use of DNA and other evidences.
The Potomac River Rapist refers to a serial rapist and murderer who was active in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area from 1991 to 1998. Ten sexual assaults and one murder were linked to the suspect by DNA. In November 2019, a suspect identified as Giles Daniel Warrick was arrested and charged in connection with the rapes and murder.
Maurice Hastings is an American former prisoner who was wrongfully convicted for the rape and murder of Roberta Wydermyer in 1983. He was released after being incarcerated for 38 years because DNA evidence linked to the murder implicated another man. Hastings requested the DNA test in the year 2000, but this was refused and was not carried out until 2021.
