"A 71-year-old Missouri inmate who says he was wrongly
convicted of sexually attacking and killing a St. Louis woman more than
three decades ago asked a state appellate court Tuesday to exonerate
him. The Midwest Innocence Project’s appeal to the Missouri Court
of Appeals on Rodney Lincoln’s behalf comes a month after Cole County
Circuit Judge Daniel Green ruled there was not enough evidence to back
Lincoln’s claim of innocence in the 1982 death of 35-year-old JoAnn
Tate, who was killed in her home. Her two young daughters were
assaulted. Lincoln has served 34 years in prison and consistently has maintained his innocence. Tate’s
daughter, Melissa Davis, is among those now supporting Lincoln, saying
she was wrong when, at age 7, she implicated him in the crime. The
Innocence Project also says testimony at Lincoln’s trial indicated a
hair found at the scene belonged to him, but genetic testing later
disproved that. With Tuesday’s appeal, “we feel confident the
court will see what we all know,” Tricia Bushnell, the Midwest Innocence
Project’s legal director, told The Associated Press. Insisting “there’s
not a single shred of evidence” justifying his conviction, she added,
“We can only believe the (appellate) court will do the right thing.” Lincoln
originally was charged with capital murder but was convicted of
manslaughter and two counts of first-degree assault. He was sentenced to
life in prison as a “prior, persistent and dangerous offender,” court
documents say. Davis began to question whether Lincoln was the real
killer last year, when the TV show “Crime Watch Daily” questioned
whether serial killer Tommy Sells, who once lived in St. Louis, could
have committed the crime. But Green, in last month’s ruling, wrote
that Davis’ “recantation made three decades after the murder, after
viewing a television show blaming the murder on a notorious serial
killer, is not new reliable evidence.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/12/new-appeal-filed-for-missouri-man-convicted-in-198/