Darryl Pinkins, 63, from Northwest Indiana, was freed from a Lake County correctional facility after being incarcerated for over 20 years over a rape case in 1989 he didn’t commit.
Pinkins was convicted in of raping a woman in 1991. All through the time of his detention he’d always claimed that he was at home in bed with his wife and was nowhere near the attack.
Pinkins was reunited with his family including a 24-year-old son who wasn’t even born at the time.
Pinkins has a new technology called TrueAllele to thank. The technology analyzes DNA and can provide reanalysis of old DNA results to pinpoint which people contributed to DNA mixtures.
Ever since 2007, volunteers from the Indiana Innocence Project, the Idaho Innocence Project at Boise State and the University Indiana McKinney Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic have been working tirelessly to prove his innocence.
Pinkins and his co-defendant Roosevelt Glenn were exonerated after analysis by DNA expert Greg Hampikian, director of the Idaho Innocence Project, and TrueAllele software inventor Mark Perlin excluded the duo. The Innocence project used evidence collected in the rape case to arrive at their findings. Glenn, also convicted of rape, was released on parole in November of 2009.
Glenn, also convicted of rape, was released on parole in November of 2009.
The experts were expected to testify at a hearing Monday, but prosecutors decided to vacate Pinkins’ conviction without requesting a new trial after reviewing their findings. A judge signed his release order Friday afternoon.
Pinkins, visibly glad at his release said “There was a crack in the system, It does exist, and I’m not the only one within this situation that’s going through this. It’s people that are not fortunate enough to get the team that I have behind me.”