HARTFORD, Connecticut, (Reuters):
A CONNECTICUT judge dropped all charges yesterday against a man who spent 18 years in prison for the rape of a woman which recent genetic tests showed he did not commit.
James Calvin Tillman, 44, was convicted in 1989 after a woman claimed he beat and raped her as she was leaving a nightclub in the city of Hartford a year earlier. He told reporters that he had never lost hope and was not bitter.
His lawyers recently showed Tillman's DNA does not match a semen stain on the victim's clothing.
The man, who is black, was living in a homeless shelter when he was arrested, picked out of a photo line-up and sentenced to 45 years in prison on circumstantial evidence and some similarities between his DNA and that of the attacker.
Hartford state Superior Court Judge Thomas Miano freed Tillman after the "Innocence Project," a state program meant to help prisoners who have been wrongfully convicted, conducted more sophisticated DNA tests.
"I don't hate nobody, I can't live my life hating nobody," he told reporters outside the courthouse. His mother, Catherine Martin, said she had always told her son not to give up hope.
