DETROIT, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- A Detroit judge Monday used DNA evidence to free a man who spent 17 years in prison for raping and killing a 16-year-old girl.
Eddie Joe Lloyd confessed to raping and strangling Michelle Jackson on Jan. 24, 1984. He confessed to the crime while in a psychiatric ward and under heavy medication. Later, he retracted the confession.
Judge Leonard Townsend set aside Lloyd's conviction after Prosecutor Michael Duggan informed the judge DNA evidence cleared Lloyd of the crime. Detroit police and prosecutors joined in seeking Lloyd's release.
"Thank you!" Lloyd exclaimed, thrusting his fist in the air.
The judge said, however, the conviction seemed based on a solid case at the time.
"This is not a case where a person was wrongfully or unjustifiably convicted," Townsend said.
Attorney Barry Scheck, head of the Innocence Project, which uses DNA technology to free those wrongly convicted, said the evidence in this case does not match anything in the FBI database, meaning Lloyd could not have committed the crime.
Scheck said the case also illustrates the need to record the questioning of the mentally ill or retarded. Lloyd was encouraged to confess by police, who said they would use the confession to "smoke out" the real killer.
Lloyd is believed to be the 110th convicted person in the United States cleared with DNA evidence. The first, Gary Dotson, Monday planned to ask Illinois Gov. George Ryan to pardon him. DNA testing in 1989 proved Dotson innocent of the 1977 rape of Cathleen Crowell.
In a highly publicized hearing, then-Gov. James Thompson in 1985 commuted Dotson's sentence to time-served but denied him a pardon, despite admissions from Crowell she lied about the rape because she didn't want her parents to know she had engaged in sexual activity with her boyfriend. At his trial, Dotson was found guilty and sentenced concurrently to 20 to 50 years for rape and 25 to 50 years for aggravated kidnapping. Crowell recanted in 1985.
The Northwestern University School of Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions filed a petition on Dotson's behalf. Ryan is expected to grant the pardon, the Chicago Sun-Times reported, making Dotson eligible for up to $100,000 in compensation from the Illinois Court of Claims.
