Federal prosecutors will not stand in the way of a man’s attempt to be declared legally innocent after wrongly serving 28 years behind bars in the killing a D.C. taxi driver.
U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen Jr. said in court filings that the 1980 conviction of Santae Tribble relied heavily on hair testing that has since been proven to be unreliable.
Machen exonerated another District man, Kirk L. Odom, who spent more than 20 years in prison for a rape based on the same faulty hair-matching testing conducted by the FBI lab. New DNA showed another man committed the crime for which Odom served 22 years.
Machen did not go so far as to exonerate Tribble, citing witness testimony, ballistics evidence and Tribble’s own testimony.
But Machen said he will not challenge the 51-year-old D.C. man’s attempt to obtain a definitive court ruling of his innocence.
“Because the hair evidence that implicated [Tribble] now has been thoroughly discredited, and because the hair evidence was a key component of the government’s case at trial, the United States does not oppose the court’s granting defendant’s request for a certification of innocence,” Machen wrote in the filing submitted Monday.
Julie Leighton, of the D.C. Public Defender Service, said she could not comment because the case remains in litigation.
A certificate of innocence would clear the way for Tribble to file a claim for compensation for his time in prison. The document could be signed as early as Tuesday.
Tribble’s conviction was overturned in May by D.C. Superior Court Judge Laura Cordero, although she did not give a reason for the reversal.
Machen agreed then that he would not try Tribble again.
Tribble was found guilty of the early-morning robbery and murder of John McCormick on July 26, 1978. During the trial, members of the FBI’s crime lab testified that hairs found on a stocking mask were a microscopic match to Tribble. DNA testing was not available at the time.
Tribble, then 17, was sentenced to 20 years-to-life in prison.
In the mid-1990s, the Justice Department found that testing hair samples by site was unreliable, and the agency ended the practice.
Tribble was released on parole in 2003. After his release, his parole was revoked four times, most recently in September.
In 2011, the hairs found on the stocking were submitted for DNA testing. None of the hairs was a match to Tribble.
