About a dozen men around the Washington region have been exonerated of crimes that they had been convicted of because of faulty eyewitness identifications. Some were released after having spent decades in prison before DNA evidence showed they were innocent. Such cases have irrefutably proved “that wrongful convictions occur,” said Jon Gould, a professor of justice, law and society at American University.
Here are a few of those stories:
» Phillip Thurman was exonerated in 2005 after serving 19 years for an Alexandria rape he didn’t commit. After the December 2004 attack, the victim told police her assailant was tall, thin and wearing a green jacket. Thurman was arrested because he was nearby and matched those characteristics. In 2005, testing on the victim’s underwear showed that another man — a convicted rapist in the state’s DNA database — was the real perpetrator.
» This April, Calvin Cunningham was granted a writ of actual innocence in a May 1979 rape in Newport News. His case was re-examined as part of a Virginia initiative to test DNA in old cases.
» Walter Snyder was exonerated in 1993 of a 1985 Alexandria rape and burglary. The victim initially told police that she could not see her attacker’s face, but Snyder — who lived across the street from the woman — was convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison after she identified him at trial as her assailant.
» In 2009, Victor Burnette was cleared in a 1979 rape in Richmond. Burnette was arrested when he turned around after seeing the victim talking to a detective near her apartment the next day. The victim identified Burnette as the assailant, even though he had a beard and glasses — features she had not said her attacker had. DNA testing done in 2006 showed he was not the source of semen found at the crime scene, and he was pardoned in April 2009.
— Emily Babay
