Walter Snyder was 20 years old when he was convicted of rape and sentenced to 45 years in jail for a crime he did not commit.  A mistaken eyewitness identification and police tunnel led to a wrongful rape conviction that put Snyder in prison for seven years.
           
On October 27, 1985, a woman was raped, sodomized and burglarized in her own home in Alexandria, Virginia.  She reported that her attacker was a black male wearing red shorts and a grey hooded sweatshirt.  She initially told police that the room was dark and that she could not see the face of the rapist, a fact that was not disclosed to defense counsel before trial.  She also told the police that her attacker had smooth hands and smelled of alcohol and body odor – another fact that was not revealed to the defense.  After speaking with the victim, police began to question her neighbors, asking if they had noticed anything or anyone suspicious on the night of the attack.  Two people reported seeing Walter Snyder, who lived across the street from the victim, outside of his house in the hours before the attack.

The following day police visited Walter Snyder at his place of work.  They asked him to go with them to the station, where Snyder agreed to be fingerprinted and photographed.  Snyder, an amateur boxer, also told the police that he did own a pair of red shorts.

A few weeks later, police showed a photo lineup to the victim.  The photo of Snyder taken at the police station was included, but it was the only one of seven photos viewed by the victim that was a head shot rather than a full-body photograph.  After examining the photos, the victim said four of the seven suspects looked familiar.  Snyder was not among these four.  When examining the photos a second time, the victim told police that Snyder’s eyebrows looked familiar but that she could not identify him as her attacker.  Although the victim had not identified Snyder as the rapist, he became the focus of the investigation.  Police obtained a search warrant for Snyder’s home, confiscating his red boxing shorts.

In January of 1986, Snyder went to the police station himself, hoping to get his shorts back.  With Snyder in the station, police called the victim and arranged for her to come to the station herself.  Upon seeing Snyder at the police station, the victim identified him as the rapist.  Officers took Snyder in for questioning, during which they claim he confessed to the crime.  No written or recorded copy of this alleged confession exists.  At some point during this interrogation, Snyder’s nose was broken.  Once he “confessed” to the crime, he was arrested for rape, aggravated sexual battery, and breaking and entering.

Snyder pled not guilty to the charges against him.  Despite hear earlier statement that she could not see the attacker’s face – which was not disclosed to the defense – the victim positively identified Snyder at trial.  After learning that Snyder worked as a heating and cooling repairman and lived in the basement of his parents’ house, she testified at trial that her attacker smelled like “kind of a combination of oil and a basement.”  Since the defense had not been made aware of her earlier description of the attacker’s smell, it could not challenge this shift in the victim’s description.  The jury also learned that Snyder had the same blood type as the rapist.  Based on this evidence, the jury found Snyder guilty of the attack, and he was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

After reading an article on DNA testing, Snyder became convinced he could finally prove his innocence.  He and his family sought several different lawyers in an attempt to obtain the physical evidence and complete the testing.  In 1992, their hard work paid off when DNA tests excluded Walter Snyder as the rapist.

Although the results showed Snyder’s innocence, he was not immediately released.  DNA tests were repeated three separate times before the Commonwealth of Virginia became convinced of Snyder’s innocence. With the help of the Innocence Project, Snyder was finally released on April 23, 1993, after then-Governor Wilder signed an executive order of clemency.  Following his release, Snyder had his record expunged.

Walter Snyder received $11,200 in compensation from the state of Virginia.  He also received an undisclosed amount when he settled a separate civil suit against the Alexandria, Virginia, police department.