Black Virginia Man Exonerated of Rape After 27 Years

Imagine being in the prime of your life at the age of 18 and all of a sudden you are accused of a heinous rape.  This is what happened to Thomas Haynesworth.  Haynesworth was arrested 27 years ago when he was on his way to the store to buy groceries for Sunday dinner. In the process he was observed by a woman who had been attacked by a man a few days earlier and told a police officer that he was the assailant. Haynesworth informed the police that they had the wrong man. But five women ultimately identified him as their attacker. He was convicted in three attacks and acquitted in one; one case was dropped. Despite the fact that Haynesworth took and passed two polygraph examinations about the two remaining convictions, he was still imprisoned.

After being mistakenly identified as the man who had attacked five women in the area in January and early February of 1984, he was eventually convicted and sent to Greensville Correctional Center. In 2009, DNA testing proved Haynesworth innocent of one of the rapes and also confirmed that another man, Leon Davis — a notorious serial rapist who called himself the Black Ninja — actually committed the crime. At the time, however, no DNA evidence remained in Haynesworth’s two remaining convictions, but DNA testing in a case where he was acquitted also cleared Haynesworth and implicated Davis, who was charged with a series of rapes occurring between April and December of 1984 and is serving seven life sentences.

Finally, after 27 years of proclaiming his innocence, Haynesworth was finally released from Greensville Correctional Center on Monday, March 21, 2011, the morning of his 46th birthday but he was not fully exonerated until this week.

A Virginia appeals court declared Thomas Haynesworth an innocent man on Dec. 6Tuesday, clearing his name and acknowledging that he spent 27 years behind bars for rapes he did not commit. This was the first time the state has issued a “writ of actual innocence” in a rape case without the certainty of DNA evidence. Haynesworth, describe the moment as “a blessing.”

“I’m just so happy,” Haynesworth said. “You just want your name restored. You want to prove to them that they made a mistake.” –torrance stephens, ph.d.