A man who spent 35 years behind bars in the US after being wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl has been freed from prison thanks to a DNA breakthrough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Louis Wright, now aged 65, had lived near the child’s home in Albion, Michigan, at the time of the attack in 1988 and an off-duty officer reported seeing him about five hours before the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That year, Mr Wright was sentenced to 25-50 years for various sexual assault charges, and 6-15 years for breaking and entering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this year, however, the Michigan Department of the Attorney General’s Conviction Integrity Unit was told that items from the case were found by the Albion Department of Public Safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The items were sent for testing and came back with “foreign male DNA”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result of this, Mr Wright was excluded as the perpetrator, resulting in his charges being set aside, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On 18 January 1988, a perpetrator broke into the girl’s home while she was asleep and forced her into the living room where he assaulted her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later that day, Mr Wright voluntarily went to the local police department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Officers said he confessed, though the interview was not recorded and he did not sign a confession, according to the Cooley Law School Innocence Project which represents Mr Wright.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the girl was never asked to take part in any identification process, or identify anyone in court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Wright pleaded no contest to the charges – which is treated as a guilty plea for sentencing purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He then tried to withdraw his plea and claimed he was innocent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over decades in prison, Mr Wright has consistently maintained his innocence and it is unclear why he pleaded no contest in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutor David Gilbert said the case is being reopened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There is no justice without truth. It applies to everyone,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Wright could be eligible for a $1.75m payout under a state law that grants $50,000 for each year spent in prison for a conviction overturned based on new evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A man who spent 35 years behind bars in the US after being wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl has been freed from prison thanks to a DNA breakthrough. Louis Wright, now aged 65, had lived near the child’s home in Albion, Michigan, at the time of the attack in 1988 and an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[220],"tags":[3154,1475,193,1931,3155,1276],"class_list":["post-7573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-35-years","tag-man","tag-news","tag-prison","tag-sexually-assaulting","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7575,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7573\/revisions\/7575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/miaminewsnetwork.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}