A Pennsylvania man who served 34 years in prison for the rape and murder of a teenage girl – after being fingered by jailhouse snitches – was released Thursday because of new DNA tests.
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Lewis Fogle, 63, was released on bond because he remains charged and could be retried by District Attorney Patrick Dougherty, who filed the joint motion to vacate the conviction with the New York-based Innocence Project. “Sometimes it seemed like it was never going to come”, he said.
The witness testimony that helped land Lewis Fogle behind bars was questionable, the judge found.
Fogle asked the Innocence Project to represent him, according to the organization. “Now that his conviction has been vacated, we are grateful that he will be reunited with his friends and family today”.
His family was brought to tears upon learning he’d be released. The previous day, Deann’s younger sister saw a man telling her their brother had been in a auto crash, and the sister later saw her in the man’s vehicle. New DNA testing of recently discovered crime scene evidence, excluded Fogle and pointed to an unidentified man. “It was always a weird case, trial, very thin case”, Innocence Project Managing Attorney David Loftis said.
Dougherty will review other evidence before deciding whether to retry Fogle.
The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. “We’re saying there isn’t sufficient evidence for a conviction at this time”, he said. He was the only one of four people arrested in March 1981 to be tried. The organization said in a statement that “it was only after his fifth interrogation, during which he was placed under hypnosis by someone with no formal training, that he implicated Fogle”.
Mr. Fogle, the first to face trial, steadfastly proclaimed his innocence in Deann’s death but nevertheless a jury convicted him of second-degree murder.
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Charges against his three co-defendants were dropped for lack of evidence.
