DNA Test Frees 18-Year Louisiana Inmate

After serving 18 years for rape, a Louisiana man was released from prison Friday night because a DNA test exonerated him.

Clyde Charles became the 66th person in the U.S. released from prison in this country as a result of DNA tests establishing their innocence, officials said.

Charles was not available for comment. But Bruce Dodd, an attorney for the Louisiana prison system, said Charles was “in good spirits.”

At his request, Charles was driven from the state penitentiary at Angola in a stretch limousine that had been provided to his family by New York attorney Barry Scheck, who, with his colleague Peter Neufeld, has specialized in establishing the innocence of convicted individuals through the use of DNA testing.

“This is great,” Scheck said. “This man is innocent. This result was based on real science.”

Now 46, Charles was convicted of raping a woman in Grand Caillou, La., about 60 miles south of New Orleans, in 1981. Charles, a commercial fisherman at the time, received a life sentence but always maintained his innocence.

He has been seeking DNA testing, which compares tiny amounts of genetic material, for nine years, but the state refused his request. Earlier this year, Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York, took on the case and filed a suit that the state’s action constituted a federal civil rights violation.

The suit was settled when the state agreed to the testing, the attorney said. Scheck, who played a key role on O.J. Simpson’s defense team in his 1995 criminal trial, said Friday that tests by a laboratory run by noted forensic scientist Edward Blake in Northern California and by the FBI excluded Charles.

The scientists took semen samples from the original rape kit that had been preserved since 1981 and obtained recent samples of Charles’ blood. Then they compared the samples.

The woman who was raped initially told law enforcement officers that her assailant was a clean-shaven black man. Local authorities picked up Charles the night of the rape and brought him to the hospital and asked the woman if he was her attacker. She said he was, even though Charles had a beard and mustache, Scheck said.

Joseph L. Waitz, the district attorney for Terrebonne Parrish, where the rape occurred, said, “Obviously it was a case of mistaken identity.” Waitz said the rape kit “was preserved by the grace of God. It was just blind luck that when Scheck made the request [for DNA testing] that we were fortunate to find it.”

Waitz, who said that he was in college when the trial was held, applauded the outcome. “Our job is to put people who committed crimes in jail. If there is technology that will exculpate an innocent man, I’m all for it.”

Scheck said his next move will be to ask a Louisiana legislator to introduce a bill to compensate Charles for the lost years.