WRONGLY-CONVICTED INMATE GOES FREE AFTER 17 YEARS IN PRISON
Atlanta – August 31, 2004

Clarence Harrison, 44, of Decatur, Georgia, walked out of a DeKalb County courtroom this morning a free man. Harrison had been incarcerated since November 1986 for a crime he did not commit.

DNA test results proved that Harrison was not the perpetrator of an October 1986 rape, robbery, and kidnapping.

Harrison is a client of The Georgia Innocence Project (GIP). The organization was founded in August 2002, and Clarence Harrison is the first prisoner exonerated through GIP’s efforts.

DNA test results were finalized just a week ago, and through the cooperation and assistance of the DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, Harrison’s Extraordinary Motion for a New Trial was heard quickly. This morning, DeKalb Superior Court Judge Cynthia J. Becker granted the motion and the District Attorney’s request that Harrison be released immediately.

If you’d like to email Clarence directly, you can reach him at clarence@ga-innocenceproject.org.

BACKGROUND ON THE CASE: CLARENCE HARRISON
Early on the morning of October 25, 1986, a woman was attacked as she walked in the rain to a bus stop in Decatur, Georgia. The assailant approached the woman, hit her in the face, and then dragged her to an embankment. The assailant raped and sodomized the woman and dragged her to two other locations, repeating the crime in each location. At some point during the assault, the assailant stole the woman’s wristwatch.

After the assailant left, the woman sought help at the home of a friend, and police were called. The victim was taken to a local hospital for treatment where a rape kit was collected.

During investigation, police were led to Clarence Harrison because he lived not far from the site of the abduction and because neighbors told police they had heard someone at his house had a watch to sell. However, the victim’s watch was not found at Harrison’s home.

Harrison still became a suspect, and investigators included his photo in a group of pictures they showed to the victim. She identified Harrison as her attacker. Another woman who lived in the neighborhood told officers that two men had come to her door that night, and one was wet. From a similar group of photos, she picked out Harrison.

Police arrested Clarence Harrison in early November 1986. He maintained his innocence from the outset. A DeKalb County jury convicted him on March 18, 1987 of rape and robbery, and Harrison was sentenced to life in prison.

In September 1988, at the request of the DeKalb County Public Defender’s office, slides from the rape kit were sent to a commercial lab for DNA analysis. That lab was unable to perform DNA analysis on the slides, but Clarence Harrison continued to pursue DNA testing. He contacted several organizations without success before writing to The Georgia Innocence Project (GIP) in February 2003.

Several GIP interns worked on the case. The bulk of the work on the case was done by two interns. Laura Verduci is a third year law student at Georgia State University; Jason Costa is a second year law student at Emory University. The first interns to realize that this was a good innocence claim were: Emily Gilbert, from GSU Law School - now a public defender in DeKalb County, and Tracy Shessler, a recent Emory graduate with a major in Sociology and minor in Violence Studies.

Though slides from the case had been sent at least once for testing, Mr. Harrison was told in the early 1990s that all the evidence had been destroyed. GIP was able to track down two slides from the rape kit.
The DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office offered complete cooperation and assistance to GIP from the time it initiated contact about the Harrison case. New DNA samples were taken from Mr. Harrison, and they were sent to Dr. Edward Blake at Forensic Science Associates in California, along with one slide from the rape kit. Dr. Blake returned his results in late August 2004 with the conclusion that the DNA evidence obtained from Harrison could not possibly belong to the same man whose DNA was in the rape kit.

BACKGROUND ON THE GEORGIA INNOCENCE PROJECT
The Georgia Innocence Project (GIP) began operation in August 2002 and began to investigate cases in January 2003. GIP’s mission is to free the wrongly prosecuted through the use of DNA testing, to advance practices that minimize the chances that others suffer the same fate, and to educate the public that wrongful convictions are not rare or isolated events.

GIP adheres to an extensive screening process for its cases. To date, GIP has received more than 1,100 requests for assistance but has accepted only seven clients. The case work is done primarily by volunteer law students and lawyers throughout Georgia with supervision from Executive Director Aimee Maxwell, a lawyer with 16 years experience, most recently with the Georgia Indigent Defense Council.

The Georgia Innocence Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that receives funding from the Georgia Bar Foundation, the Lawyers Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Hewitt Foundation, ChoicePoint Cares, the Charles Edmondson Foundation, and other private donors.