"DNA TESTS OFFER HOPE TO SOME PRISONERS. BUT FOR CRIME VICTIMS, THE EXAMINATION OF BIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE CAN RIP OPEN OLD FEARS, OLD WOUNDS AND OLD DOUBTS. THEN COMES THE ANXIETY OF WAITING FOR THE ANSWERS -- TEST RESULTS THAT CAN CEMENT CLOSURE FOR SOME VICTIMS AND CREATE ETERNAL CONFLICT FOR OTHERS."
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH;
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BACKGROUND: PART ONE: According to the Innocence Project, "Ohio lawmakers last week (March 16, 2010) passed a package of sweeping criminal justice reforms aimed at preventing injustice by addressing the leading causes of wrongful convictions. The bill, which Gov. Ted Strickland is expected to sign within days, was called by one lawmaker “one of the most important pieces of criminal justice legislation in this state in a century."Each time DNA testing helps to free an innocent person from prison, we can study how our criminal justice system failed — and address the problem so it doesn’t happen again. Ohio is now a model in targeting reforms to help free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions and apprehend the true perpetrators of crime. The bill includes improvements to lineup procedures, a method for parolees to apply for DNA testing, incentives for police departments to record interrogations and a requirement that evidence in serious crimes be preserved. The Innocence Project worked closely with the Ohio Innocence Project for the last two years to pass these critical reforms. While these reforms are badly needed from coast to coast, the urgency for systemic change became clear in Ohio after the Columbus Dispatch published the groundbreaking series "Test of Convictions," documenting flaws in the state’s system and helping to bring about two exonerations so far. The series’ two reporters, Mike Wagner and Geoff Dutton, will receive the Innocence Network’s first-annual Journalism Award next month. (April, 2010)
BACKGROUND: PART TWO: THE FIVE PART COLUMBUS DISPATCH SERIES THAT PROMPTED DRAMATIC CRIMINAL LAW REFORM IN OHIO:
* PART ONE: Evidence is often lost or destroyed.
* PART TWO: Ohio rejects tests for parolees and the dead.
* PART THREE:Victims relive horror when inmates get testing.
* PART FOUR; Innocent man must register as sex offender.
* PART FIVE: DNA promising in questionable cases.
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BACKGROUND PART THREE; THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH'S MODUS-OPERANDI: The Dispatch built case files on 313 inmates from 51 counties who applied for DNA tests. The newspaper reviewed every case with the Ohio Innocence Project, a University of Cincinnati-based legal clinic that represented many of the inmates. The reporters interviewed three dozen inmates and former inmates, as well as prosecutors, crime victims and others with a stake in the system.
BACKGROUND PART FOUR: THE REPORTERS; Geoff Dutton is a projects reporter who joined The Dispatch in 2002. He has reported on unsafe conditions in youth prisons, home foreclosures and predatory lending, and the consequences of sentencing juvenile criminals to adult prisons. Dutton worked previously for newspapers in Florida and Ohio. Mike Wagner has been a projects reporter at The Dispatch since 2006. He has profiled former OSU quarterback Art Schlichter, examined the lack of black coaches in high schools and detailed fan behavior at Big Ten football games. Previously, he worked as an investigative reporter for the Dayton Daily News.
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am struck by the sheer contrast between Texas and Ohio when it comes to the criminal justice system. The State of Texas does its best to hide any information which could show that it could have convicted, or even executed an innocent man - as is so evident in the Cameron Todd Willingham and Hank Skinner cases. The State of Ohio is aggressively seeking to free the innocent and prevent wrongful convictions through legislation. This revolution in Ohio didn't just happen. It is the result of a magnificent investigation conducted by the Columbus Dispatch. This Blog applauds the Dispatch for pouring in the hefty resources required for such a massive undertaking, the Innocence Project and the Ohio Innocence Project, for its unique cooperation with the newspaper, and the writers, photographers and editorial staff who did such a phenomenal job. Reporters Geoff Dutton and Mike Wagner richly deserve the Innocence Network’s first-annual Journalism Award which is to be presented next month. (April, 2010);
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am struck by the sheer contrast between Texas and Ohio when it comes to the criminal justice system. The State of Texas does its best to hide any information which could show that it could have convicted, or even executed an innocent man - as is so evident in the Cameron Todd Willingham and Hank Skinner cases. The State of Ohio is aggressively seeking to free the innocent and prevent wrongful convictions through legislation. This revolution in Ohio didn't just happen. It is the result of a magnificent investigation conducted by the Columbus Dispatch which began on January 27, 2008. This Blog applauds the Dispatch for pouring in the hefty resources required for such a massive undertaking, the Innocence Project and the Ohio Innocence Project, for its unique cooperation with the newspaper, and the writers, photographers and editorial staff who did such a phenomenal job. Reporters Geoff Dutton and Mike Wagner richly deserve the Innocence Network’s first-annual Journalism Award which is to be presented next month. (April, 2010);
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"Jane Tillar dunked her Lipton tea bag in hot water as her sister walked in with the morning newspaper," the story begins, under the heading, "Flashback: Inmate's DNA test sparks vivid memories of rape."
"They sat down at the kitchen table, surrounded by pictures of Jane's four children and 10 grandchildren," it continues.
"It was a sunny Labor Day weekend in suburban Cincinnati, and Jane was looking forward to her family gatherings.
Then she opened the paper and saw her rapist glaring back at her.
Jane screamed to her sister. "Oh, dear God; Joe Elliott is going to get a DNA test," she said, holding the paper in her shaking hands. "How could no one tell me about this? What if he has been innocent all these years? What if the man who raped me is still out there?"
DNA tests offer hope to some prisoners. But for crime victims, the examination of biological evidence can rip open old fears, old wounds and old doubts.
Then comes the anxiety of waiting for the answers -- test results that can cement closure for some victims and create eternal conflict for others.
Jane, 69, welcomed the chance to publicly share her story for the first time, noting that even close friends have avoided talking about it with her.
For Jane, the anxiety about the attack returned on Sept. 2, 2006. Only a few letters from the parole board during the previous 11 years had reminded her of the attack. Now, the morning headline had stripped away her peace of mind.
The Ohio Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic based at the University of Cincinnati's College of Law, had taken on Elliott's case and won a legal fight with prosecutors to test biological evidence. No one from the prosecutor's office had told Jane about the pending DNA test of the swabs taken at the hospital.
Because it was a holiday weekend, Jane had no way of calling anyone for the next three days to answer her many questions.
She lived with her sisters and was active in her community. She wasn't haunted by the rape, and rarely thought of the June 1992 attack.
But for those three days, Jane's mind was filled with thoughts of the past -- the steel blade touching her head, her nightgown being lifted and the pain her husband took to his grave.
The open door
Jane opened her blurry eyes moments before the kitchen knife was resting against her temple. Her head lifted slightly off the pillow as she turned toward the alarm clock that read 3 a.m. A bottle of wine stood at the feet of the man holding the kitchen knife.
"Roll over, bitch," the intruder commanded.
Hours earlier, Jane and her husband, Donald "Whitey" Tillar, were serving chicken casserole and chocolate cake to her children and grandchildren. Now, the 53-year-old woman, wearing a pink nightgown with the word joy on the front, was being raped in her own bed. Her husband, a chronic snorer, was asleep in an adjacent room.
Jane thought she would suffocate as the man covered her face with her pillow.
"If you scream, I will kill your husband," the rapist said.
The first attack lasted a few minutes. Then the man pulled Jane down the stairs to the first floor, where he sat her on the edge of the couch and forced her to perform oral sex.
The man then dragged Jane to the dining-room floor, where he raped her again. During this attack, he noticed the scars on Jane's chest from a mastectomy. The tone of his voice softened, and he asked his victim if she had cancer.
"Don't let anyone tell you that you are not beautiful," he said.
The sound of a flushing toilet whooshed above them. The distraction gave Jane the moment she needed to escape. She ran through the hallway and up the stairs, screaming.
"Whitey, call 911! I was raped!"
Still in a sleepy fog, her husband sprinted down the stairs but the attacker was gone. Whitey glanced at the sliding-glass door, the one that he had forgotten to lock when he went to bed. He grabbed his head and yelled in agony.
"Oh, my God! This is my fault, this is my fault!"
A husband's pain
It had been 18 months since the attack. Jane heard a loud thump, followed by silence.
Her husband lay facedown on the stairs, motionless. Whitey, who already suffered from failing kidneys, was rushed to the hospital for a severe head injury.
When he was able to talk again after a few days, Whitey greeted his wife.
"Hello, Diane," he said to Jane, mistakenly using the name of an old flame.
In the aftermath of the rape, Jane's attacker remained somewhere on the streets, and she and Whitey moved from their condominium to escape the painful memories.
The couple's troubles only grew worse. Whitey's architecture business, which had been struggling before the rape, finally collapsed. Jane's agony deep- ened when her pregnant daughter called to say that her child would be stillborn.
Now, Jane's husband of 35 years was in a nursing home and calling her the name of an old girlfriend.
"That was my breaking point right there," Jane said. "The attack itself wasn't as hurtful as seeing what was happening to our lives."
Jane turned to a psychologist to cope with the chaos. She and Whitey had seen a counselor together half a dozen times after the rape, but it did little to heal her husband's guilt.
For several months after the fall, Whitey lost his memory, including any thoughts of the attack. But they returned at the nursing home as he battled the kidney disease that ravaged his body.
"He would just start crying and telling me again and again he blamed himself," Jane said. "Then he would say how much he wanted revenge on the man that did this to me. The hardest part for both of us was this man was still out there."
The conviction
About two weeks after Whitey's kidneys failed and Jane buried her husband in 1994, police waited for Elliott outside his English class at the University of Cincinnati.
Partial fingerprints taken from the wine bottle in Jane's bedroom and the sliding-glass door pointed to those of the 22-year-old college student. Elliott lived near the couple.
While he walked through campus, Elliott heard another student say that police were looking for him. He ran to his brother's apartment, but police were soon knocking at the door. He climbed down the drainpipe, ran around the back and again managed to escape.
After visiting a girlfriend in a northern Ohio college town, Elliott was finally arrested in November 1994.
Nearly two years had passed since Jane's attack. It was a day of both relief and more agony for a grieving widow.
"I wish Whitey was here for this," Jane told her sister. "He would have rested easier knowing police caught this guy."
But another year of waiting passed before Jane found herself on a witness stand, reliving the brutal attack that had stolen her peaceful life.
For nearly an hour, Jane described how she was raped and robbed.
"He had the pillow over my head. I thought I was going to suffocate," she told the jury. "I thought I was going to die right there."
The jury found Elliott guilty.
But it wasn't until a judge sentenced him to 15 to 50 years in prison that Jane received what she had craved for more than three years: "I finally had the closure I needed."
The test results
Eleven years later, Jane opened the morning paper and discovered that the man convicted of raping her had been granted a DNA test. She then put herself back on the witness stand, but this time there was no jury; only her conscience, again questioning every detail of the case.
The rapist warned Jane not to look at his face just before he climbed into her bed. Fearing she or her husband would be killed, she shifted her eyes down or held them closed. It was dark, and Jane didn't want to watch him anyway.
Jane never did see his face. Other than his skin color and general build, Jane was never able to give the police a description.
In the months she waited for Elliott's DNA test, doubts flooded Jane's thoughts. Maybe Elliott was innocent. Maybe the police made a mistake with the fingerprints on the wine bottle and door.
Authorities testified during the trial that a spot of blood on Jane's nightgown was Elliott's. But a blood test after the conviction proved it came from Whitey, who cut himself on a baby crib while running to his wife the night of the attack. Maybe there were other problems with the case.
"I felt sorry for him, for making him serve all that time in prison for something I couldn't be sure he did," Jane said. "I never saw his face."
On a cold February night in 2007, Jane's phone rang. It was the prosecutor's office.
Jane held her breath, just slightly, and waited.
The voice on the phone told her the evidence matched Elliott.
Jane exhaled.
"It was him all along," she said.
Like some other inmates, Elliott wanted to roll the scientific dice, hoping for a DNA miracle that would cover up his crime. Elliott declined to be interviewed.
It would have been easy, almost expected, for Jane to be angry at the Ohio Innocence Project and justice system for allowing Elliott the test. But the devout Catholic said she never has harbored any resentment toward anyone. She has even tried to forgive Elliott.
Despite her ordeal, she believes that prisoners should have the right to DNA tests in cases involving real doubt.
"The worst part at the end is when they called me a senior (citizen) in the newspaper," Jane said, tears rolling toward her slight grin. "It brings closure either way, and that's what it did for me.""
This story can be found at:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/01/29/dna3.html
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
