DNA clears jailed man of rape after 27 years

A MAN sentenced to life imprisonment 27 years ago has celebrated his release after a DNA test cleared him of the rape for which he had been charged. "I'm just thankful that this is behind me," John White, 48 said at the Atlanta offices of the Georgia Innocence Project, a watchdog group that helped him obtain the DNA testing.

Mr White was released from a Georgia prison on Monday night after DNA tests showed hairs found at the scene of the 1979 rape were not his. Mr White was sentenced to life in prison in 1980. He was released on parole in 1990 but was required to complete his life sentence after he lost his parole on a 1997 robbery conviction. "I was raised on the chain gang, and I didn't know how to make my way once I got out," he said.

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More background: Faulty eyewitness identification again

White was arrested six weeks after the August 11, 1979 rape, and the victim, who had also been beaten and robbed, picked him out of a photo line-up. She later picked White, then 20, out of a live line-up, and he was found guilty the following May of rape, aggravated assault, burglary and robbery and sentenced to life in prison plus 40 years. He served about 10 years of that sentence before he was paroled in 1990.

But White was convicted three years later with marijuana and cocaine possession and spent another 2 years in prison. Then, after two years of freedom, White was convicted in 1997 of robbery and sentenced to 7 years. But more importantly, White's parole was revoked, reinstating the original sentence of life in prison for the rape he adamently claimed from the beginning that he didn't commit.

In 2004, White wrote a letter asking for help from the Georgia Innocence Project (GIP), a non-profit organization started in 2002 that uses DNA testing to free those wrongly convicted of crimes. The GIP took on the case, and discovered earlier this year that while a piece of human flesh found at the crime scene had been destroyed, hairs collected and linked to White through microscopic analysis were still on file at the Meriwether County Superior Court Clerk's office.

In early November the evidence was sent to the GBI Crime Lab for DNA testing. Thursday the lab determined that the hair did not come from White, but from another person already in the DNA database. That man is now being investigated for raping the woman, who is deceased.

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