New DNA Technology sets free a 1989 rape convict

A new DNA analysis program that has been used in the past for missing person cases, in identification of 9/11 victims and by prosecutors in many states came to the rescue of Darryl Pinkins, 63, a northwest Indiana man who was wrongfully convicted and served nearly 25 years in prison for a 1989 rape case.

Pinkins was convicted in 1991 of raping a Hammond woman. He's always maintained he was at home in bed with his wife when the attack happened.

Since 2007, teams from the Indiana and Idaho Innocence Projects and the Indiana University Law School wrongful conviction clinic have been working to prove his innocence. Pinkins case marks the first exoneration using a new DNA analysis program called TrueAllele, according to an Innocence Project news release. The process can provide reanalysis of old DNA results to pinpoint which people contributed to DNA mixtures.

Analysis by DNA expert Greg Hampikian, director of the Idaho Innocence Project, and TrueAllele software inventor Mark Perlin excludes Pinkins and his co-defendant Roosevelt Glenn from evidence collected in the rape case, according to the Innocence Project. Glenn, also convicted of rape, was released on parole in November of 2009.

The experts were expected to testify at a hearing on Monday, but prosecutors decided to vacate Pinkins' conviction without requesting a new trial after reviewing their findings. His release orders were signed by a judge on Friday.

"There was a crack in the system," Pinkins told reporters after his release. "It does exist, and I'm not the only one within this situation that's going through this. It's people that are not fortunate enough to get the team that I have behind me."

Greg Hampikian believes that the tool should be used in a wide-scale review of DNA cases in which there were complex DNA mixtures or inconclusive results, the news release says. Experts claim it could affect convictions across the country.

"This technology holds the key not just to answering complex DNA problems, but the literal key to freedom for men like Daryl Pinkins and Roosevelt Glenn," Hampikian said in the statement.