DNA frees innocent NY man after 24 years

A US man who spent 24 years behind bars was freed today after DNA testing and other evidence convinced prosecutors he was not involved in the robbery and rapes that led to his 130-year sentence. Alan Crotzer, 45, was freed more than three years after he wrote to the Innocence Project in New York, a legal clinic that works to exonerate inmates through DNA testing. Crotzer had been sentenced to 130 years in prison for a 1981 robbery and two rapes.

"It's been a long time coming," Crotzer said. "Thank God for this day." Members of Crotzer's family and other courtroom spectators clapped and cheered as a bailiff removed the shackles from his wrists and ankles after Circuit Judge J Rogers Padgett said to Crotzer during the brief hearing: "Motion granted - you're a free man." Prosecutor Mike Sinacore congratulated him. "Trying to fix an error in the system is just as important as trying to convict someone who is guilty," Sinacore said.

DNA has been used to clear at least 172 people wrongly convicted of crimes in 31 states since 1989, according to the Innocence Project.

Crotzer and brothers Douglas James and Corlenzo James were convicted of robbing a Tampa family in 1981. Douglas James and Crotzer were also found guilty of kidnapping and raping a 38-year-old woman and her 12-year-old daughter at gunpoint. A victim picked Crotzer out of a photo lineup. But Douglas James maintained that Crotzer is innocent, and that he and his brother were the rapists and a childhood friend was their accomplice.

Crotzer, who has never held a paying job, said he will go live with a sister in St Petersburg, Florida and try to find work. His lawyers said they will seek compensation from the state for him.

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