DNA Clears Detroit Man After 17 Years in Prison

DETROIT (Reuters) - DNA evidence on Monday helped overturn the conviction of a Detroit man who spent 17 years in prison for the rape and murder of a teen-age girl.

Eddie Joe Lloyd, 54, became the 110th person in the United States to be exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing, according to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit New York-based legal group that promotes the use of DNA evidence.

Lloyd was also the first such person in Michigan, which does not have a death penalty, prosecutors said. A Michigan law that took effect in January last year allows inmates convicted of a felony to ask courts for DNA testing and a new trial if they can show the tests might prove their innocence.

Lloyd was a patient at the Detroit Psychiatric Institute when police said he confessed on audiotape to raping and strangling high school student Michelle Jackson, 16, in January 1984.

His lawyers argued police got Lloyd to confess by telling him his confession would help "smoke out" the real perpetrator of the crime. Later, Lloyd proclaimed his innocence.

A Wayne County Circuit Court judge overturned Lloyd's May 1985 conviction on Monday and ordered his immediate release, after Wayne County Prosecutor Michael Duggan said recently completed DNA tests showed he could not have committed the crime.

The Innocence Project and Saul Green, a former United States attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, had joined Duggan in pressing for Lloyd's exoneration.

Green and the Innocence Project are also calling for a federal probe of the police officers who investigated the Jackson case and purportedly elicited the false confession from Lloyd.

"Unfortunately Miss Jackson couldn't speak from the grave," Lloyd told reporters after he was set free. "But modern man and forensic science did what she couldn't do, and that's to speak from the grave."

1. 1828: Patrick Fitzpatrick was a Detroiter living across the Detroit River at an inn in Sandwich (now known as Windsor), Ontario, Canada. When the daughter of the innkeeper was found raped and murdered, Fitzpatrick was arrested for the offense, summarily declared guilty by the local Canadian government even though the evidence was only circumstantial, and hung from the gallows shortly thereafter.

2. 1830: Stephen Simmons, a Detroit bartender with a wicked temper which was exacerbated by drinking, came home from work late one night (early one morning) after consuming large amounts of alcohol, and engaged in a violent argument with his pregnant wife. He began to beat her and in the process, killed her and their infant-in-utero. Charged with murder, Simmons was sentenced to die by hanging.

The Sheriff, however, convinced that Simmons had not really intended to kill his wife but was too drunk to realize what he was doing to her, resigned rather than carry out the death sentence. A hurriedly appointed temporary Sheriff Woodworth, seeing this situation as an excellent means to further his career, gleefully set out to make this execution the gala event of the year.

Invitations were issued gratuitously, bleachers built, and the community was caught up in a blood-thirsty roil. On the appointed day, every inn and hotel was packed and masses of people jammed the area, vying for the best seats to view the grisly scene and partake of the carnival atmosphere. Accompanied by brass bands, local officials and vendors hawking their wares, Stephen Simmons was paraded along a circuitous route so that all could get a good "last look" at the man to be hung on the gallows, where now stands the Downtown Detroit Library.

As the condemned man stood quietly on the platform, the rope already around his neck, Sheriff Woodworth magnanimously asked him if he had any last words. Stone-cold sober and grievously aware of the cost of his actions - the tragic death of his wife and child - Simmons sang out in what history records as a rich baritone voice:

Show pity, Lord, O Lord, forgive; Let a repenting rebel live. Are not Thy mercies full and free? May not a sinner trust in Thee? My crimes are great, but can't surpass The power and glory of Thy grace. Great God, Thy nature hath no bound, So, let Thy pardoning love be found.

The floor opened beneath and Stephen Simmons was hung `till dead. The stunned and horrified audience was deeply moved. A pall was cast over the gathering. In somber silence they filed away, disgusted with this version of "justice," feeling that they were the ones who were ashamed. One witness called the execution both "cruel and vindictive."

3. 1835: Back in Sandwich (Windsor), Ontario, Canada, Patrick Fitzpatrick's former roommate lay on his deathbed. Needing to clear his conscience before departing this world, the man confessed that it was he who had raped and killed the innkeeper's daughter in 1828. In Detroit, Fitzpatrick's hometown, people were enraged that an innocent man had been executed.

4. 1846: Michigan had just become a State, and the first official act of the legislature was to constitutionally abolish the death penalty.The constitutional language was approved in the Spring of 1847, and became official on March 1st, 1847. They had learned their (history) lesson well. The people of Michigan continue to hold forth to their noble heritage; the current penalty for capital crimes is a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole. The sentence can only be commuted by the governor. The very, very few, and none in recent years, life sentences which have been commuted, occurred only after an average of 29 years have been served.

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