Georgia Man Exonerated Of Rape And Freed From Prison After 17 Years
DNA testing has freed another innocent man. Kerry Robinson walked out of a Georgia prison Wednesday after a judge’s order to release him due to new analysis of DNA evidence clearing him of a rape conviction.
“Modern DNA technology has further confirmed what we’ve known for a long time: Kerry Robinson is an innocent man,” one of his lawyers, Rodney Zell, said in a news release from the Georgia Innocence Project, which helped push for Robinson’s exoneration.
“I am so grateful that new technology is finally able to meet the incredibly high thresholds for righting wrongful convictions in Georgia,” Zell said.
via CNN:
Robinson’s conviction stemmed from a case in 1993, when three young men raped a woman at gunpoint at her home in Moultrie, about 40 miles north of the Florida state line.
From pictures in a junior high school yearbook, the woman identified one attacker who would later be convicted.
But that attacker accused Robinson of being involved — which Robinson denied. Robinson has said he thinks the attacker implicated him because Robinson had reported him to police in a different investigation, according to the Georgia Innocence Project, a nonprofit that aims to overturn wrongful convictions.
The rape survivor never identified Robinson as a perpetrator, the nonprofit says.
The convicted attacker testified against Robinson, and received a lesser sentence for his cooperation, the nonprofit says.
The 44-year old served 17 years of his 20 year sentence but with the help of new technology and supporters, Kerry is now a free man.
