Scientific Evidence Points to Innocence: Karl Vinson Requests New Trial in 1986 Rape Case

From [HERE] The Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan says Karl Vinson didn't rape a 9-year-old Detroit girl in 1986 and will ask the Michigan Court of Appeals today to grant him a new trial.

"The scientific evidence conclusively proves that this man is innocent," clinic codirector David Moran said of Vinson, a former Detroiter who has spent 25 years in prison. Moran said Vinson, 56, is the victim of a flawed forensic test and that more recent tests rule him out as a suspect.

But the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office opposes the request because the girl identified Vinson as her attacker.

"Science does not trump the testimony of individuals," Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Marilyn Eisenbraun said in court documents. She wouldn't discuss the case. 

Police said an intruder raped the girl in the early hours of Jan. 3, 1986, after climbing through her bedroom window. When he left, the girl woke up her mother, who called police.

The girl, who required surgery, initially was unable to tell her mother who raped her, records show. But when her mother suggested Vinson, the girl said he did it.

Vinson and his wife had babysat the girl three years earlier. During a breakup, Moran said, Vinson's wife told the girl's mother that Vinson might have molested the girl. But nothing came of the accusation, and a polygraph test he supposedly flunked in the 1986 rape wasn't admitted at trial.

Tests on the girl's bedsheet revealed the presence of semen and Type O blood antigens. Vinson has AB blood. But because a test showed he is a nonsecretor -- someone whose blood antigens don't show up in saliva, semen and other bodily fluids -- Detroit Crime Lab technician Paula Lytle testified at trial that his AB antigens wouldn't have shown up in the semen stain. So, she couldn't rule him out as a suspect.

Vinson's parents testified that he was home at the time of the rape, but a jury convicted him, and Wayne County Circuit Judge Vera Massey Jones sentenced him to 10-50 years in prison.

In 1991, with the advent of DNA testing, Vinson began pressing officials to test the semen stain for his DNA. In 2006, he learned that police had destroyed crime scene evidence.

In 2009, with the help of Claudia Whitman, a Colorado prisoner advocate, he was given a new test that showed he is a secretor, meaning his AB blood antigens should have showed up in the semen stain.

Jones refused last month to grant a new trial.

She said the fresh semen stain on the girl's sheets might have come from a sexual encounter involving the girl's parents, even though the prosecutor said at trial that it had come from the rapist.

Moran said Jones' theory never came up at trial.

"In this case, there's absolutely no evidence that anyone other than the rapist left semen in that little girl's bed," Moran said.

Jones didn't respond to an interview request.

It could take the appeals court several months to decide whether to review the case.