Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project
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Archive for May, 2007

200th Innocent Man Cleared By DNA Testing

Posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 by Eily Raman

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April 23, 2007, saw this country's 200th exoneration of a wrongfully convicted person freed by DNA testing.  Jerry Miller, 48, of Chicago, was convicted of rape in Cook County, Illinois, in 1981.  His conviction was based on the eyewitness identification testimony of both the victim and two parking lot attendants who saw the attacker at the time of the offense.  Descriptions given by these three individuals immediately after the rape were used to create a composite sketch of the attacker.  Police arrested Mr. Miller because they believed that he resembled the composite sketch.  They brought him in for a lineup, at which time both attendants idenitified him.  They then testified at his trial.  At the trial, the victim testified that she thought Mr. Miller looked like her attacker, even though the attacker was described as having a few days' growth of facial hair and Mr. Miller had a full goatee.  Mr. Miller was convicted and served 25 years in prison.  Finally, in 2006, the case came to the attention of the Innocence Project in New York, which reached out to the Cook County state's attorney's office DNA Review Unit, seeking testing of the evidence in the case.  That office located the evidence in the case, including the victim's slip, which contained the attacker's DNA.  The DNA not only proved that Mr. Miller did not commit the offense, but it also pointed to the man who did — a man who had committed at least one other rape while Mr. Miller sat in prison.  To read the Chicago Tribune's recent series of articles on the case and to view a video of the news conference at which he spoke following the court hearing, go to www.chicagotribune.com/news/local and search for "Jerry Miller."   

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