An Innocent Man
Clarence Harrison had nearly given up - then a phone call changed his life
By David Simpson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 02, 2004

Clarence Harrison lost hope that anyone would ever believe he was not a rapist.

Here he was, in prison for a crime he knew he didn't commit. Day after day, year after year, he spent his idle time behind

Harrison's fiancée, Yvonne Zellars, and brother Nathan Jackson celebrate Tuesday. A phone call to another inmate years ago put Harrison in touch with Zellars. (Photo courtesy AJC)

bars gambling.

But sometimes he prayed.

He prayed to be delivered from hopelessness. And he prayed for "a good Christian woman."

The second prayer was answered first, when an inmate talking to his girlfriend on the phone impulsively put Harrison on the line with the woman's mother.

It was then that Harrison found faith, then love, then hope. And, finally, deliverance.

After 17 years in prison and 48 hours of freedom, Harrison shook his head and marveled at it all.

"I'm still in a daze," he said Thursday as he sat in the office of the Georgia Innocence Project. The cluttered, crowded office was the headquarters of the mostly volunteer group that obtained the DNA test that proved Harrison was innocent.

Harrison said he had worried some people might object to his highly publicized release Tuesday. Instead, he said, "People stop me and hug me."

It hardly seems the same world he occupied for years, despairing that no one would believe him.

ID'd in photo lineup
On Oct. 25, 1986, a 25-year-old woman was attacked while walking to a bus stop in Decatur. A man punched the woman in the face and dragged her to three locations, where he raped and sodomized her.

Early suspicion fell on Harrison, who lived nearby and had been sent to prison when he was 19 years old for armed robbery. Harrison served five years of a 10-year sentence and was released in 1983.

On the rainy autumn morning after the woman was raped, neighbors told police someone at Harrison's house had been trying to sell a watch, which might have belonged to the rape victim.

The victim's watch was never found at Harrison's house, but the woman did pick Harrison out of a photo lineup.

The letter Harrison sent to the Georgia Innocence Project, which obtained the test that proved his innocence. (Photo courtesy AJC)

Harrison was convicted largely on the basis of the identification. The judge sentenced him to life in prison.

At first, he was determined to prove his innocence.

"I worked on my case so much I got migraine headaches," he said.

He read an article on the new DNA science and managed to get evidence from the victim's rape exam retested in 1988. But the sample proved insufficient for the technology of that time.

In 1994, his mother died. He could not attend the funeral.

An older sister also died, shortly after she visited the parole board on Harrison's behalf. Parole was a distant possibility.
Harrison turned to the daily gambling opportunities in prison.

"After a year or so, you get burned out and you fall off into the system and you lose faith and your hope and you begin to believe you'll never get out," he said. "And that happened to me."

Still, he prayed: "Lord just give me strength to survive . . . [until] whenever you get ready to help me come up out of this."

A serendipitous call
When a young inmate, laughing with his girlfriend on the phone, handed the receiver to Harrison, he at first thought he was being invited to flirt with a young woman. No way, he said into the phone before he cut off the conversation.

The woman on the other end actually was the girlfriend's mother, Yvonne Zellars, and after chatting, the two arranged to talk again.

Zellars offered to write him and become his friend. Harrison told her it was pointless to strike up a relationship with a lifer.
But finally he agreed Zellars could write him about what she learned from the Bible. She began visiting him on weekends.

About a year later, in 1998, Harrison asked Zellars: If ever he could be free, would she marry him?

She said yes.

Her consent propelled his interest in Christianity. He began attending morning Bible study and evening services.
And Zellars pushed him to try again to prove his innocence.

So on Feb. 10, 2003, Harrison took pen and lined paper and addressed a letter to the Georgia Innocence Project, then less than a year into its mission of helping inmates who might be exonerated by modern science.

"My name is Clarence Harrison," he began. "I am presently being held falsely accused of crimes I could not have

In an interview Thursday, Clarence Harrison recalls the process that got him out of prison, where he served 17 years for a rape he did not commit. Recent DNA testing proved his innocence, and he was freed Tuesday. (Photo courtesy AJC)

committed."

The organization has received more than 1,400 such letters and has opened just six cases. Harrison had an early edge. His lawyer from 1988, who helped arrange the first unsuccessful test, was on the project's board. Evidence once feared destroyed was found by unpaid interns.

Then, on Aug. 24 came the news that a new DNA test proved beyond doubt that Harrison was not the rapist.

A week later, Harrison was a free man with Zellars at his side. He told a throng of reporters they would marry as soon as he could afford a ring. By Thursday, donors had stepped forward to provide not only rings, but a wedding cake and even a singer, said Aimee Maxwell, executive director of the Georgia Innocence Project.

A business owner called to offer a job.

However he decides to earn a living, Harrison wants to help the Georgia Innocence Project work for other inmates.

His thoughts also have turned to the victim.

"I hope she doesn't hold any anger toward me," he said Thursday. "I never held any anger toward her. I just thought she made a mistake."

He believes the real rapist will be found, and "I want her to know that God will make a way."

As proof, he carries in his wallet his favorite Bible verse, James 1:12:

"Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him."