n 1986, Anthony Robinson, a twenty-six-year-old college graduate and U.S. Army veteran, was put on trial for the rape of a University of Houston woman. The victim told police that her attacker was a black man with a moustache wearing a plaid shirt. That same day Robinson was on campus picking up a car for a friend. Even though Robinson did not have a moustache, police arrested him. Robinson was placed in a lineup and identified by the victim. Although no physical evidence linked him to the crime, the victim’s confident identification led to Robinson’s conviction and he was sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison.
After being released on parole in 1997, Robinson took odd jobs to save enough money to hire an attorney and pay for post-conviction DNA tests on the case’s biological material. On September 19, 2000, DNA test results proved Robinson’s innocence. Even though the Harris County District Attorney’s Office confirmed the results with their own test, they still did not believe Robinson to be an innocent man. The DA’s office argued that the semen came from an unknown man with whom the victim had consensual sex and that Robinson still had something to do with the crime. There was no evidence to back up this theory.
Anthony Robinson spent ten years in prison due to a mistaken eyewitness identification.
On November 7, 2000, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously voted to recommend Robinson’s pardon, and he was granted an official pardon by Governor George W. Bush seven days later. After spending a decade behind bars for a crime he did not commit, Robinson went back to school and received his law degree from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University.
Because of a mistaken eyewitness identification, Anthony Robinson spent ten years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
