17. Weimer, Howard • Date of Conviction: 1985 • Date of Exoneration: 2005 • Summary of the Case: Howard Weimer and his wife operated a licensed foster care home from the 1960s through the 1980s. The Weimer’s fell under suspicion in the summer of 1984, when a former foster child of theirs – Charlene Ashcraft – responded to a newspaper reporter who was writing a series on child molestation. Ashcraft alleged that Weimer had molested her 23 years earlier, while she was a foster child living in his home. She was told to write a letter to Edward Jagels, Kern County’s District Attorney, describing what had happened. Based on the accusations in Ashcraft’s letter, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department removed four foster children then living in the Weimer’s …show more content…
She called out to a 15-year-old relative who was nearby waiting for a bus and pointed to the man, who was walking away. The relative told the girls to run home. When she got home the nine-year-old told her mother that the man grabbed his “private parts” and said bizarre things to them. The girl described the man as black, 5 feet, 11 inches, 200 pounds with black jerry-curled hair, black eyes, a mustache and a high-pitched voice. The girl’s mother did not call the police. The following day, 09/29/1998, while on the way to school, the nine-year-old saw the man again. She said he forced her and her 5-year-old friend behind a nearby day care center where he sexually assaulted both girls and ejaculated on the nine-year-old girl’s shirt. Police interviewed the girl later that day and she said that the man had touched her with his penis the day before, but she had not told her mother. In this interview, she did not mention that the man had ejaculated on her the second day, so her shirt was not retrieved by police. The girl said that the man said his name was “Johnny.” When the girl’s mother heard that the man had identified himself as “Johnny,” she concluded that it had been 23-year-old Johnny Williams Jr., a neighborhood resident whose physical appearance was quite different than the man the nine-year-old described. Williams was black, 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighed 250 pounds. On September 30, police showed the girl a photographic lineup and she selected Williams’ photograph—although by that time, she knew that her mother believed Williams was the attacker and she had heard her mother refer to him by his first and last name. Williams was charged with two counts of lewd conduct with a child, kidnapping, and rape. He was initially also charged with assaulting the five-year-old girl, but those