Karl Vinson is proven not guilty of rape but The Wayne County prosecutor's office defends the rape conviction.
Detroit, MI- The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office is opposing a proposed request for a new trial for a Detroit man who has spent 25 years in prison for a rape that, according to the University of Michigan's Innocence Clinic, he didn't commit.
April 18, Detroit Free Press:"The scientific evidence conclusively proves that this man is innocent," clinic codirector David Moran said of Vinson, a former Detroiter who has spent 25 years in prison.
Moran said Vinson, 56, is the victim of a flawed forensic test and that more recent tests rule him out as a suspect.
But the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office opposes the request because the girl identified Vinson as her attacker.
"Science does not trump the testimony of individuals," Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Marilyn Eisenbraun said in court documents. She wouldn't discuss the case.
The prosecutor's remark, to me, is as frightening as it is arrogant and ignorant.
How can science—that is to say, physical proof—not absolutely trump someone's testimony if the two are in conflict? How is testimony alone enough to keep a man locked away when the evidence, the science, if you will, says he deserves to be set free?
And how can a prosecutor, someone who's supposedly committed to pursuing truth, defend such a miscalculation so brazenly when it appears to have resulted in a 25-year false imprisonment?
Link: http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/04/post_56.html