Edward Honaker served nearly 10 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.  Honaker was convicted of seven counts of rape and sodomy and sentenced to three life sentences plus 34 years.  DNA testing done more than eight years after the crime excluded Honaker as the rapist.

On June 22, 1984, a young woman and her boyfriend pulled over to the side of the road near the Blue Ridge Parkway.  They were lost and decided to sleep in their car for the night.  Later that night, a man knocked on their car window and woke them.  He said he was a police officer and told both the victim and her boyfriend to get out of the car and give him the car keys.  When they complied, the offender pulled a gun from his left side and pointed it at the boyfriend.  The offender told the boyfriend that he would be shot if he did not run away.  After the boyfriend had obeyed and begun to run, the offender ordered the victim to get into his car.  He then drove the victim to an abandoned building where he raped and sodomized her for about two hours.  In between attacks, the rapist smoked cigarettes and talked about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam.  He repeatedly mentioned the name of a lieutenant he blamed for getting his friends killed. After the attack, the rapist told the victim how to get back to her car and drove away.  When the victim finally returned to her car, her boyfriend was there with law enforcement.

The victim and her boyfriend identified Honaker as the attacker four months after the attack took place. Honaker swore that he was innocent.  At trial, the victim, her boyfriend and other witnesses testified that they believed Honaker to be the rapist.  The physical evidence against Honaker included hairs found on the victim after the attack. A prosecution expert testified that the hairs left by the perpetrator definitively matched Honaker’s hair type and that it was “unlikely that the hair would match anyone other than the defendant.”

Honaker presented several alibi witnesses who testified that Honaker had been at his brother’s house at the time of the crime.  Honaker himself testified and again swore to his innocence.  Honaker informed that jury that he had previously undergone a vasectomy and was thus unable to produce sperm, despite the fact that sperm had been found in the victim.  Honaker also testified that he had never served in Vietnam.  Despite this testimony, Honaker was found guilty of two counts of rape, one count of forcible sodomy, one count of aggravated battery, one count of abduction, and two counts of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.  For these crimes, on April 10, 1985, Honaker was sentenced to three life sentences plus 34 years.
           
It 1993, DNA testing was finally done on the evidence.  This initial testing excluded both Honaker and the victim’s boyfriend as the source of the semen.  While it was initially believed that the source of the semen must have been the rapist, the victim came forward and admitted for the first time that she had a secret lover at the time the crime was committed.  That man’s DNA was tested against the evidence, and he was also excluded as a possible source.  With the boyfriend, secret lover, and Honaker excluded, the only possible source was the real rapist.

Along with the DNA evidence, Honaker’s legal team found additional evidence of Honaker’s innocence.  The victim and her boyfriend were only able to identify Honaker from the photo array after they had been hypnotized.  The defense had not been told about the hypnosis or the fact that the victim had previously been unable to recall her attacker’s face.  The “expert” who testified at trial said the hairs probably were Honaker’s, but a forensic scientist from Virginia testified that the most conclusive statement that can be made when comparing hairs under a microscope is that they are “consistent.”  The legal team also pointed out once again that Honaker had not served in Vietnam, that his truck did not match the description initially given by the victim and her boyfriend, and that Honaker was unable to produce sperm as the result of a vasectomy.
 

On October 22, 1994, Edward Honaker was granted executive clemency and released from prison after serving 10 years.  He received $500,000 in compensation from the Commonwealth of Virginia.  The real perpetrator has not been found.