{"id":26541,"date":"2023-11-11T04:38:44","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T09:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=26541"},"modified":"2023-11-11T04:38:44","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T09:38:44","slug":"man-cleared-of-sexually-assaulting-child-after-35-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/11\/11\/man-cleared-of-sexually-assaulting-child-after-35-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Man cleared of sexually assaulting child after 35 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who spent 35 years behind bars in the US after being wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl has been freed from prison thanks to a DNA breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Louis Wright, now aged 65, had lived near the child’s home in Albion, Michigan, at the time of the attack in 1988 and an off-duty officer reported seeing him about five hours before the incident.<\/p>\n

That year, Mr Wright was sentenced to 25-50 years for various sexual assault charges, and 6-15 years for breaking and entering.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, however, the Michigan Department of the Attorney General’s Conviction Integrity Unit was told that items from the case were found by the Albion Department of Public Safety.<\/p>\n

The items were sent for testing and came back with “foreign male DNA”.<\/p>\n

As a result of this, Mr Wright was excluded as the perpetrator, resulting in his charges being set aside, officials said.<\/p>\n

On 18 January 1988, a perpetrator broke into the girl’s home while she was asleep and forced her into the living room where he assaulted her.<\/p>\n

Later that day, Mr Wright voluntarily went to the local police department.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Michigan<\/div>
A Michigan state police car. (Image: iStock)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Officers said he confessed, though the interview was not recorded and he did not sign a confession, according to the Cooley Law School Innocence Project which represents Mr Wright.<\/p>\n

But the girl was never asked to take part in any identification process, or identify anyone in court.<\/p>\n

Mr Wright pleaded no contest to the charges – which is treated as a guilty plea for sentencing purposes.<\/p>\n

He then tried to withdraw his plea and claimed he was innocent.<\/p>\n

Over decades in prison, Mr Wright has consistently maintained his innocence and it is unclear why he pleaded no contest in the first place.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor David Gilbert said the case is being reopened.<\/p>\n

“There is no justice without truth. It applies to everyone,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Wright could be eligible for a $1.75m (\u00a31.43m) payout under a state law that grants $50,000 (\u00a340,900) for each year spent in prison for a conviction overturned based on new evidence.<\/p>\n

Source: \u00a0\"Sky<\/a> news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man who spent 35 years behind bars in the US after being wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl has been freed from prison thanks to a DNA breakthrough. Louis Wright, now aged […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[9891,8892,9892,1397,480,1584],"class_list":{"0":"post-26541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-albion","11":"tag-conviction-integrity-unit","12":"tag-cooley-law-school-innocence-project","13":"tag-dna","14":"tag-michigan","15":"tag-sexual-assault","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26541"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26544,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26541\/revisions\/26544"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}