Innocent Man Freed From Prison

By Dorie Turner (Associated Press) with Harry Franklin, The Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus, GA) , December 12, 2007

Photo by John Amis/Associated Press
John White smokes a cigarette in front of the Georgia Innocence Project after a news conference Tuesday in Atlanta. White was released from Macon State Prison on Monday after DNA tests exonerated him.

John Jerome White, 48, was released from Macon State Prison on Monday evening after the test results came back late last week. He was picked up by his mother and sister.

"I'm just thankful that this is behind me," White said at a news conference Tuesday morning with the Atlanta-based Georgia Innocence Project, which had persuaded authorities to run a DNA test on the evidence from the 1979 rape.

Breaking into tears, White added: "When I first started out, I wondered why this happened to me. I just saw it as something that had to happen because I wasn't living a moral life."

District Attorney Peter Skandalakis of the Coweta Judicial Circuit said the DNA in the rape case matched a file in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation database, leading authorities to investigate a new suspect. A GBI spokesman said no new suspect is in custody.

The hair samples used to check DNA had been kept since White's conviction in the Meriwether County Superior Court Clerk's Office, which Innocence Project Communications Director Lisa George said is "among the most organized court clerk's offices in the state."

White was convicted of rape, burglary, aggravated assault and robbery by a Meriwether County jury in 1980 for breaking into a 74-year-old woman's home and raping and robbing her. The woman has since died.

He was sentenced to life in prison and was paroled in 1990.

White was sent back to prison for 2 1/2 years on a drug violation in 1993. In 1997, he was charged with robbery. He was convicted, sentenced to seven years and required to finish out his life sentence for the 1979 rape.

White, who was 19 when he entered the prison system, didn't have the life skills he needed when he was paroled to "make really good choices" and had trouble finding a job because he was a convicted sex offender, said Aimee Maxwell, director of the Georgia Innocence Project.

"He just didn't know how to survive," she said. "He tried for a while, but he just had a hard time."

At Tuesday's news conference, White said he was "no choir boy."

He was joined at the news conference by his wife of 14 years, Mary White; his mother, Florence White; and three of his six sisters. All of them said they had believed in his innocence all the years he was in prison.

"When they called to tell me that he was getting out, I didn't know whether to shout, cry or holler," said his mother, who lives in Meriwether County. "I'm so glad to have him back home one more time before I leave this world."

White met his wife while he was on parole in the early 1990s and married her before he was sent back to prison. She said she's grateful to finally have her husband home.

"I just want to thank God for returning my husband," she said through tears.

Maxwell said White is the seventh Georgia convict to be cleared by DNA evidence. In every case, the men were wrongly convicted based on eyewitness accounts.

"This case does point out the fallibility of eyewitness identification," Maxwell said.

The DNA in the case came from hairs found at the crime scene. DNA testing was not available to authorities at the time of the 1979 rape.

Maxwell's organization is working with state lawmakers and authorities to require all law enforcement agencies to develop and follow clearly written procedures for doing an eyewitness identification with a victim, Maxwell said. The organization has research showing 82 percent of the 355 Georgia law enforcement agencies surveyed do not have any type of written eyewitness standards.

Willie O. "Pete" Williams was freed earlier this year after spending nearly 22 years in prison for rape.

White was one of 3,250 state inmates who have requested assistance from the organization to prove their innocence. The Georgia Innocence Project began taking Alabama cases in July, since there is no similar group in Alabama. White sent a letter asking for assistance in 2004. The organization began intensive work on his case in 2005. An order was signed to conduct the DNA test Nov. 7. The GBI called with the results Thursday, and White was informed of the results Friday by the Innocence Project staff, George said.

The organization will try to help him get his medical and dental needs addressed and then help him find a job.