Inmate Imprisoned for 21 Years Released a Day After DNA Tests

The Washington Post ^ | February 13, 2003 | Carol Morello

[John H K]

A Hampton Roads man was freed from prison yesterday, two decades after he was convicted of raping a nursing student and just one day after DNA tests conclusively proved another man committed the crime........

......Ruffin was found guilty of raping and sodomizing a woman in 1981 after breaking into her apartment. Several weeks after the attack, the victim was in an elevator at Eastern Virginia Medical School when Ruffin, a maintenance worker there, walked in. The victim called police, who arrested him on the basis of her account.

Ruffin's girlfriend said he was with her at the time of the rape. But at his trial, the victim said she was certain that Ruffin had attacked her, Zedd said. Using the scientific testing common at the time, semen found at the crime scene was linked to a pool that included 8 percent of all African American men.

Two juries couldn't reach a unanimous verdict; a third jury found Ruffin guilty. He was sentenced to five life terms.

[John H K]

Guy had three trials, was finally convicted in the third one.

Fortunately, the same DNA case that cleared this guy got a hit in VA's database of people convicted of felonies, so it looks like they'll get the actual perp.

Yet another example of how incredibly unreliable eyewitness testimony is. Yet we've been encouraged to have absolute blind faith in it. The response of people to psychological study after psychological study showing how bad eyewitness testimony is seems to be to simply pretend nothing is wrong; it seems to make people VERY uncomfortable since it's the basis of so much of our legal system.

The airwaves and movies are filled with crime dramas and court scenes; I can't remember the last one where an eyewitness was wrong, that wasn't deliberately lying.

The article doesn't give the race of the nurse that was raped, but if she was white, this is likely another example of something well known through psychological studies but isn't mentioned much because it isn't all that PC....people really CAN'T tell "Them" apart.

People of one race have great difficulty telling people of other races apart...much more so than for their own race. It's not just blacks telling whites apart but also true of African blacks telling whites apart (American blacks do better since they're a minority and have more practice), Asians can't tell blacks apart, whites can't tell Asians apart, etc.

[knuthom]

People of one race have great difficulty telling people of other races apart...much more so than for their own race.

My sister was one of only two white girls in her Brownie troop. One was blond and one had red hair. The black troop leaders kept getting them mixed up. I guess they looked at them and saw only a "white girl".

[John H K]

Another example is that once you're around enough Asians it's very simple to tell Japanese from Koreans from Chinese from Vietnamese, for example.

However, if you've lived in some isolated town in Tennessee or something with no Asians, you don't have a prayer of telling them apart.

I frankly am surprised that they had to go through two hung juries before they finally got a conviction...eyewitness testimony from a victim is VERY powerful. Though I think it's clear they had absolutely NOTHING else on the guy.

[Bonaparte]

Nobody knows better than Elizabeth Loftus, just how frail memory is. Scroll down for her insightful articles.