Free After 16 Years In Jail
Sixteen years ago, Calvin Johnson Jr. was sentenced to life in prison for a rape he did not commit. On Tuesday, he became a free man, thanks to DNA evidence that was not available at the time of his trial. Johnson talked about his ordeal Thursday on CBS This Morning.
In 1983, an all-white jury in Clayton County, Georgia convicted Johnson of raping a white woman. Two white women in two counties three miles apart had been attacked within days of each other. Police believed one man was responsible for both crimes. Johnson fit the description of the rapist.
One victim pointed him out in a police lineup, but did not identify him from a stack of photos in which his mug shot from a 1981 burglary conviction was included. The other victim identified him from the photos but not the lineup.
Johnson went on trial in both counties. In Clayton County, a predominately white county, an all-white jury deliberated for 45 minutes and convicted him despite evidence in his favor presented by an expert from the Georgia State Crime Lab and witnesses who supported Johnson's alibi. In nearby Fulton County, which has a large population of African-Americans, a mixed jury deliberated for two days and acquitted him.
He was sentenced to life in prison in November 1983. Under Georgia law, he would have been eligible for parole if he were to admit guilt and take a sex offender course. He refused to do that.
"I had faith and trust in God," Johnson says. "I believe as long as I kept my faith in God, sooner or later, one day, the truth would come out."
More than 16 years later, it did. Johnson and a prison legal counseling team made an application to get evidence that was used in the case. That group was forced to fold for lack of funding, but it turned Johnson's case over to the Innocence Project, an organization headed by legal powerhouses Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck. The Innocence Project has helped exonerate 36 prisoners in the U.S. based on DNA evidence. Johnson had served the longest term of any prisoner in the cases they have worked on.
DNA tests proved that Johnson was not the rapist. The district attorney of Clayton County did not challenge the results, and Johnson was free to walk Tuesday.
Johnson, Scheck and Neufeld believe that this is one of many cases in Georgia where race is a factor in both the selection of a jury and its outcome.
"Unfortunately for Calvin right now, there is no recourse in the state of Georgia," Neufeld told This Morning. "He can't sue anybody under the federal or state law. What we're going to try to do is reach out to former President Jimmy Carter, the [former] governor, and see if we can get a private bill passed to help him out."
Clayton County District Attorney Bob Keller told a local newspaper that this was a case of God intervening, because this is the only case in which evidence was saved for so long. He shook Jonson's hand and said, "I'm sorry this happened."
But Keller denies that race played a role in the verdict. "You don't feel good when something like this happens," he said. "But I don't think anyone did anything wrong here. I dealt with him the way I would have wanted to be dealt with."
More information on the Innocence Project can be found at the Web site for the Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law.
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