Man Freed After 17 Years in Jail for Rape

By Greg Bluestein, Gwinnett Daily Post, September 1, 2004

DECATUR - It was an unlikely alliance: a group trying to free a man who served 17 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit working with the prosecutors who put him away.

That collaboration proved successful Tuesday when a superior court judge freed Clarence Harrison - a man who spent more than a third of his life behind bars after he was wrongly convicted on rape, kidnapping and robbery charges.

New DNA evidence helped clear Harrison of the charges, allowing him to leave the DeKalb Superior Court a free man, surrounded by ecstatic friends and family members.

The Georgia Innocence Project, which represented Harrison, usually runs into road blocks when working with prosecutors. To put it mildly, said group director Aimee Maxwell, ''many have not been terribly cooperative.''

DeKalb prosecutors, though, had been ''unusually'' helpful ever since Maxwell received a letter from Harrison in 2003 asking for the group's help, she said.

The district attorney's office dug up the evidence, found in an old box, and sent it to a lab. After a test confirmed Harrison was not guilty, prosecutors arranged for Harrison to be transferred to a local prison to bypass some of the red tape so he could walk out a free man Tuesday.

''There's nothing I can do to give Mr. Harrison back 17 years of his life, but I can say the system worked - once we obtained the evidence,'' said Jeffrey Brickman, the DeKalb County district attorney.