A New York truck dri­ver, who spent near­ly 19 years in prison for mur­der, was released on April 28, after test­ing of DNA found in the vic­tim’s cloth­ing exclud­ed him as the killer. Frank Sterling, now 46, was con­vict­ed of the 1988 mur­der of Viola Manville after he con­fessed to the crime dur­ing an all-night inter­ro­ga­tion. He lat­er recant­ed this con­fes­sion, claim­ing he had slipped into an hyp­not­ic state dur­ing the lengthy ques­tion­ing and par­rot­ed details giv­en to him about the crime. The DNA test point­ed to anoth­er man, Mark Christie, as the killer. Christie, who is serv­ing a sen­tence for stran­gling a 4‑year-old in 1994, con­fessed to the mur­der ear­li­er this month. He had been ques­tioned about Manville’s killing in 1988 but was dis­count­ed as a sus­pect after he denied involve­ment. (Sterling was con­vict­ed in 1992, short­ly before New York adopt­ed the death penal­ty in 1995. The state aban­doned cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment again in 2007.)

(B. Dobbin, ​“DNA Clears NY Man Wrongly Convicted of 1988 Murder,” Associated Press, April 28, 2010). See also Innocence.

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