North Carolina dropped all charges against Dwayne Allen Dail (pic­tured), who spent near­ly half his life in prison for a rape he did not com­mit. Dail, now 39, was sen­tenced to two life sen­tences plus 18 years in 1989. He has always main­tained his inno­cence, but was con­vict­ed after the 12-year-old vic­tim iden­ti­fied him as her assailant and the state claimed that hair found at the crime scene was micro­scop­i­cal­ly con­sis­tent with his. Standard pro­to­col would have ordered the destruc­tion of all evi­dence in the case after a peri­od of time, but when a police offi­cer orig­i­nal­ly involved in the case retired, author­i­ties found a piece of the girl’s night­gown in an evi­dence bag in his desk draw­er. The night­gown had not been entered as evi­dence dur­ing Dail’s tri­al in 1989 because the vic­tim’s under­wear and oth­er per­son­al items were con­sid­ered suf­fi­cient. It was test­ed by the State Bureau of Investigations and new analy­sis of the DNA on the vic­tim’s night­gown matched a dif­fer­ent per­son. Wayne County District Attorney Branny Victory asked the state court to dis­miss the orig­i­nal charges with prej­u­dice, mean­ing Dail can­not be retried on the offense.

The dis­missal of charges against Dail fol­lows a 6‑year inves­ti­ga­tion by the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence. His attor­ney, Christina Mumma, said that Dail plans to seek a full par­don from the gov­er­nor, as well as finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion that could total as much as $20,000 for each year he was wrong­ly impris­oned. After win­ning his free­dom, Dail stat­ed that he is ​“a blessed man,” and that he now plans to spend time with his fam­i­ly and vis­it the grave of his broth­er, who died while Dail was still in prison.

(WRAL and the Associated Press, August 28, 2007). The case illus­trates the poten­tial prob­lems with recent leg­is­la­tion that would allow the death penal­ty for the rape of a child. It also under­scores the prob­lems with eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and the with­hold­ing and destruc­tion of evi­dence. See Non-mur­der Crimes and the Death Penalty and Innocence.

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