(Newswire.net — April 13, 2016) —Keith Allen Harward, 60, had been accused of raping a woman and killing her husband Jesse Perron, while their three children slept in a nearby bedroom.
This crime was committed in 1982 in Newport News, Virginia, where Harward’s ship, the USS Carl Vinson, was docked at the time.
Harward was charged with entering the victim’s house and killing the man by beating him to death with a crowbar, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Experts at the time concluded that the bite marks on the woman’s leg matched the imprint of Harward’s teeth and he was sentenced to life in prison.
The rape victim was unable to identify Harward because she was attacked while no lights were on in the house. But she described the attacker as a white male, about 20 years old, wearing a sailor’s uniform. At the time of the attack Harward was 26 and the rank on the uniform did not match Harward’s.
Three decades later, DNA analysis has proved that the murder and rape were committed by another sailor, Jerry L Crotty, who was 19 at the time. Crotty has since died in an Ohio prison in June 2006, where he was serving a sentence for abduction.
The Supreme Court of the State of Virginia announced that it has recognized Harward’s innocence and reversed the murder, rape, sodomy and robbery convictions and ordered his immediate release.
This case is a prime example of the unreliability of bite-marks as evidence, said Harward’s attorneys.
The Innocence Project’s director of strategic litigation Chris Fabricant said that Keith Allen Harward is the 25th wrongful conviction or indictment based on bite-mark evidence since 2000.
During 2015. the United States has freed 149 wrongly convicted people. Each of them has, on average, a prison stay of fourteen and a half years.