When Archie Williams first requested that the fingerprints collected at the scene be run against the national database in 1999, prosecutors opposed the move
All it took was for technicians in a crime lab to run the fingerprints collected at the scene of a rape through a national database. Within hours, the experts had established a match with a serial rapist.
Williams first requested that the fingerprints be run against the national database in 1999, but prosecutors opposed the move, and there was no statute entitling him to do so. About 4 out of 5 exonerations are achieved without DNA evidence, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Yet only a handful of states allow post-conviction access to the fingerprint database, much less account for emerging technologies such as facial recognition.
There has been no comprehensive accounting of the number of such crimes. But one woman, Jennifer Thompson, who misidentified the perpetrator of a sexual assault against her and wrote a book with the man who was wrongfully convicted, was later approached by another woman who had been assaulted by the real perpetrator. Thompson’s husband, Frank Baumgartner, a political scientist, took a close look at North Carolina, finding 36 exonerations dating back to 1943.
“There wasn’t a day that passed that I didn’t stay focused on gaining my freedom,” Williams said. “I always kept a positive mind. I knew one day justice would come.”Williams’ mother moved to a home near the prison so she could visit him more easily. She died in 1999. His father died in 2003. Hollingsworth said the fingerprints, which were found near the blood stains, could have belonged to someone else, perhaps a plumber or a carpenter, he suggested.
“It would be a travesty and a danger to convict the wrong man,” she warned the jury in her closing argument.
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