An innocent man spent 17 years in prison after a woman who had been raped mistakenly identified him and another man as her attackers. It just goes to show how unreliable witness identification can sometimes be. DNA evidence would later show they were not the two rapists. Innocent man spent 17 years in prison, March 22, 2012, CNN January 29, 2011 -- The day Alan Northrop's rape conviction was overturned -- the day an innocent man walked out of prison after serving 17 years for a crime he didn't commit -- is the day the state of Washington considered its debt to him paid. "I got no apology, no nothing, no offer of any kind of financial aid," Northrop said. With no job, no training, and no work experience save for the time he spent working in the prison kitchen for $55 a month, Northrop was released with only a few dollars to his name. He owed more than $100,000 in back child support he had been unable to pay while incarcerated, and had to move in with his brother because he could not afford a place of his own. "They have lost opportunities in training, they get out and they have nothing, don't have much of their lives left in some cases," said Washington State Senator Jim Hargrove. Northrop was convicted of rape in 1993 after a woman picked him and another man out of a police line-up as the two who had attacked her while she was working as a housekeeper. Northrop was sentenced to more than 23 years in prison, of which he served 17 before being cleared by DNA evidence. The other man convicted in the case, Larry Davis, was also found to be innocent. Northrop has since found a job paying $10.80 an hour at a metal fabricator -- it used to pay $12 an hour but he was forced to take a pay cut when the company fell on hard times. And his paycheck is garnished $100 a month for that back child support. The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services has forgiven half his child support bill, but he still owes more than $50,000 to the mother of his three children. https://abcnews.go.com/US/alan-northrop-rape-bill-compensate-wrongly-convicted/story?id=12792640 I also find it remarkable how this man could have been sentenced to 23 years in prison based on only the witness of a woman who claimed he was the one who raped her. If they are going to send a man to prison for rape based on only the testimony of one woman, it should at least not be too long. (Maybe 6 years, more if the woman has serious injuries) I don't believe the woman was lying, but mistaken identification can sometimes happen. She was likely traumatized during her assault and rape, and her memory was not the most clear, then she was not able to recognize exact specific details of their faces. Later, during the lineup, she probably saw two men who reminded her of how her attackers looked, and emotions took over (understandably so) and clouded her brain. In some of these areas it's a smaller genetic pool and a lot of people look really similar to each other. Of course, when she thought she recognized her rapists, but wasn't absolutely completely certain, she didn't want to say that because then her rapists would never be brought to justice. This was from a time before DNA testing was routine. But it makes one wonder. These days, with everyone knowing a DNA test will be done, rapists will be more likely to use condoms. And then there may be no signature left behind to prove a man who is wrongly accused is innocent. That is, the next man who finds himself in the situation of Alan Northrop is not going to get out of prison. We all need to look closely at what happened here, because this point in history gives us a rare insight into how common it is for innocent men to get convicted of rape.
