In 1992, Anthony Powell was convicted of rape. However, he was not guilty. Earlier in 1991, an 18 year old white woman was raped after being abducted at knifepoint. Before leaving the scene the assailant told the woman to come to the skating rink the next day with $100. The only description she could give the police was that the man was a clean-shaven young black man with an approximation of the man’s height and weight. The next day the police used the description to search the skating rink hoping to find the assailant. They identified Anthony Powell, despite the fact that he had a full head of hair and a full beard. His picture was taken and the victim picked him out of a photo lineup and he was later convicted (Possley, n.d.).
It wasn’t until 2002 that the case was reopened to examine the DNA in the case against that of Anthony Powell. The victim claimed she also had sex with her boyfriend before the rape, so both Anthony and her previous boyfriend were tested using DNA fingerprinting to check for a match. Neither Anthony nor the boyfriend was a match and Anthony was finally exonerated and released in 2004, after 12 years of incarceration (Possley, n.d.).
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Jerry had previously been convicted of armed robbery in 1991 and so his information was in the system, but this would not have been known in 1992 because the state of Massachusetts did not allow DNA evidence during Anthony’s original trial. Jerry Dixon’s DNA was also matched with two other unsolved rape cases in the area dating back to the same 1992 time frame. Dixon was later convicted and sentence for all three rape cases (Possley,