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Anatomy of an injustice: here’s what can happen when prosecutors rely on the word of a rape accuser
By False Rape Society | Source | March 12, 2010
This is a cautionary tale for anyone who wholeheatedly supports allowing rape convictions based solely or essentially on the word of the accuser without corroboration. Dwayne Dail is a poster child for the wrongly accused. If you aren't familiar with his story, click on his name -- it is must reading. Mr. Dail went to prison as a 19-year-old for an alleged rape of a twelve-year-old girl he did not commit.
He ended up serving 18 years in prison and being victimized by the very same crime he did not commit -- repeatedly. His life was destroyed.
Mr. Dail's conviction was based almost entirely on the say so of a teenage girl.
Mr. Dail's conviction was based almost entirely on the say so of a teenage girl.
If you want to know how easy it is to do an injustice with such scant evidence, read what the district attorney who prosecuted Mr. Dail said about the case. But a warning: don't read this on an empty stomach.
Don Strickland, the attorney who prosecuted the case, said this: "I didn't have the strongest case in the world, but nor did I have the weakest." (See, it's perfectly OK to try someone for a crime that will send him away for decades without having the strongest case.) He explained that his prosecution of Dail hinged on two things -- the victim's identification and the "microscopically consistent" hair found on the rug in her room (which just meant that the hair had the same characteristics as Mr. Dail's hair).
Don Strickland, the attorney who prosecuted the case, said this: "I didn't have the strongest case in the world, but nor did I have the weakest." (See, it's perfectly OK to try someone for a crime that will send him away for decades without having the strongest case.) He explained that his prosecution of Dail hinged on two things -- the victim's identification and the "microscopically consistent" hair found on the rug in her room (which just meant that the hair had the same characteristics as Mr. Dail's hair).
Strickland said the following: "The strongest thing I remember about it was the way she identified him. She was walking in an apartment area and she just froze and said 'Mom, that's him.' She was an excellent witness. She was almost a prosecutor's dream. She positively (identified) him."
A "prosecutor's dream" -- because she seemed so believable. Never mind if she really was telling the truth.
As for the hair: "The science of that hair match was not the greatest in the world, but in those days we didn't have DNA. It was the best we had. I thought it was better than nothing, but it turned out it wasn't."
A "prosecutor's dream" -- because she seemed so believable. Never mind if she really was telling the truth.
As for the hair: "The science of that hair match was not the greatest in the world, but in those days we didn't have DNA. It was the best we had. I thought it was better than nothing, but it turned out it wasn't."
And a pubic hair found at the scene did not match Mr. Dail.
Oh, they had other "evidence," too -- useless evidence -- a vaginal swab, but they weren't able to make an accurate determination whether the semen had come from Mr. Dail or not.
Great.
Wait, there's more. What about the police investigation? "It wasn't the greatest police work in the case. That detective was no Sherlock Holmes."
So, you had junk science with the "consistent" hair that the prosecutor now admits was the same as nothing, you had evidence that was inconsistent with Mr. Dail's involvement, you had evidence that everyone accepted showed nothing (the vaginal swab), you had a mediocre police investigation -- and you had a twelve-year-old girl who was very believable.
Ladies and gentlemen, what this case came down to is this: a twelve year old girl sent a 19-year-old man away for 18 years -- because a district attorney and the jury believed her over him. She was a better actress than Mr. Dail.
As the prosecutor said: "The girl said that he was the guy who did it. I couldn't dismiss that," Strickland said.
Read that last sentence again and again, and let it sink in. A man's liberty, his life, was completely in the hands of a twelve-year-old girl.
His life was destroyed because she turned out to be a better little actor.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, tells us that there is something very, very wrong with the system.
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