Phillip Thurman was granted a full pardon by then-Virginia Governor Mark Warner in 2005 after DNA evidence proved that Thurman had spent 19 years in prison for a rape, abduction and assault he did not commit.

In the early morning of December 30, 1984, a 37-year-old woman was abducted, beaten, raped and strangled by an unknown African-American man while she was waiting at a bus stop in Alexandria, VA.

Shortly after the victim told police her assailant was tall, think and wearing a green jacket, Thurman was found near the crime scene matching the description the victim gave.  The victim and another witness later identified Thurman as the assailant.  Mistaken witness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions.

Mary Jane Burton, an analyst at a Virginia state crime lab, analyzed biological evidence found on the victim’s underwear.  Under the limited forensic technology available at the time, all Burton was able to confirm was that the assailant had Type B blood type.  Though Thurman does have Type B blood, it is a type shared by 20 percent of African-American men.

Thurman was convicted and sentenced to 31 years in prison.  He served 20 years before being released on parole, at age 50, on November 17, 2004.  Throughout his prison stay, he maintained his innocence and wrote to lawyers, judges, lawmakers and organizations asking for help.  When he was released, he was forced to register in Virginia as a sex offender.

After Burton died in 1999, it was discovered that she kept samples of many of the cases she analyzed.  In 2001, 2003 and 2004, tests using her samples proved that Marvin Anderson , Julius Earl Ruffin and Arthur Whitfield were all innocent of the crimes they were convicted of.

Thanks in part to the urging of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, then Gov. Warner decided to test a random sample of the evidence left behind by Burton.  On December 14, 2005, Gov. Warner announced that of the 31 samples tested, two indicated that the wrong man was convicted of the crime: Phillip Thurman and Willie Davidson.

The testing used the same sample Burton analyzed from the victim’s underwear.  On December 14, 2005, Gov. Warner announced that not only did the testing exclude Mr. Thurman, but it also produced a cold hit from a known rapist in Virginia’s DNA database.  

On December 22, 2005, Gov. Warner issued a pardon for both Thurman and Davidson.  Thurman was eventually given an undisclosed amount in compensation for his wrongful conviction.

The results of these experimental tests proved that a number of wrongfully convicted people could prove their innocence through the DNA samples that Mary Jane Burton kept.  As a result, Gov. Warner fully authorized the Old Case Testing Project, which MAIP is helping to coordinate to guarantee that every case sample Burton maintained could be tested.

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