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Josiah Sutton

State: Texas
Incident Date: 10/98
 Age at Arrest: 16
 Conviction Date: 1999
 Age when Exonerated: 22
 Exonerated Date: 05/14/04
 Time Served: 4.5 years
 Conviction: Rape
 False Confession: False
 Implicated by Another Youth: False
Details

In 1998, at age sixteen, Josiah Sutton was accused and convicted of abduction and rape based on the victim’s misidentification and a flawed forensic DNA analysis. Sutton's mother contacted University of California criminology professor William Thompson with concerns over the DNA testing procedure which had been used to convict Sutton. Thompson did his own testing and concluded that the semen source which had been used in the original case did not come Sutton. The Houston Police Department crime lab, which conducted the original testing, has since been shut down over questions about the quality of its results. Using this new evidence, Sutton's attorneys filed an appeal, and in 2002 Sutton was exonerated.



Post Exoneration: