After 27 years of proclaiming his innocence, Thomas Haynesworth was finally released from Greensville Correctional Center on March 21, 2011, the morning of his 46th birthday, and exonerated on December 6, 2011.

As an 18-year-old boy living in Richmond, he had no criminal record. Rather, he was a music fanatic and family-oriented young man who was picking up sweet potatoes for his mother when he was mistakenly identified as the man who had attacked five women in the area in January and early February of 1984.

In 2009, DNA testing proved Haynesworth innocent of one of the rapes and also confirmed that Leon Davis — a notorious serial rapist who called himself the Black Ninja — actually committed the crime. Unfortunately, no DNA evidence remained in Haynesworth’s two remaining convictions, but DNA testing in a case where he was acquitted also cleared Haynesworth and implicated Davis, who was charged with a series of rapes occurring between April and December of 1984 and is serving seven life sentences.

After a thorough review of the crimes with its co-counsel at the Innocence Project and Hogan Lovells US LLP, as well as the Commonwealth’s Attorneys in the two jurisdictions where Haynesworth was convicted, it became clear to MAIP’s Executive Director Shawn Armbrust that the two remaining convictions matched the very distinctive modus operandi of Davis. Moreover, the DNA results prove that multiple women mistook Haynesworth for Davis and that Davis was committing rapes in January of 1984. Finally, at the request of the Commonwealth’s Attorneys, Haynesworth took and passed two polygraph examinations about the two remaining convictions.

Based on that compelling evidence of innocence, both Commonwealth’s Attorneys and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli agreed to support Haynesworth’s petition for Writ of Actual Innocence, which was filed on February 3, 2011. And on February 15, the Commonwealth filed an answer to the petitions, asking the court to vacate Haynesworth’s convictions and set him free.

On March 18, the Virginia Parole Board announced that Gov. McDonnell revisited the possibility of parole for Thomas, which was denied in June 2010, and had requested he be released. Haynesworth walked out of prison just three days later, but sadly remained a registered sex offender and under degrading parole restrictions for the nine long months that followed as he waited for a judgement by the Virginia Court of Appeals, a harsh reality for a man who lost nearly three decades of his life to wrongful conviction.

During those months, MAIP and the rest of Haynesworth’s legal team, as well as the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, argued twice before the Virginia Court of Appeals. After the first argument before an appeals court panel in April, the panel requested a hearing before the full Court of Appeals. Cuccinelli and Armbrust argued before the full court in September, and finally, on December 6, 2011, the Virginia Court of Appeals issued a 6-4 decision, fully exonerating Haynesworth and clearing his name at last.

In the time between his release on parole and his exoneration, Haynesworth has worked dilligently to rebuild his life. He’s made up for many lost years with his mother and met his neices and nephews, many of whom are grown, for the very first time. He’s reunited with old friends, traveled to DC, and has been introduced to the comforts of modern-day technology. But perhaps what’s most ironic is that in the truly unique spirit of collaboration that ultimately set him free, he spends his days working in the mail room of the none other than the Virginia Attorney General’s Office.