ollowing the sexual assault of an El Paso woman in the spring of 1987, police created a photo lineup that included Brandon Moon, a twenty-five year-old military veteran and aspiring jet pilot. The victim tentatively chose Moon’s picture and later firmly identified him in a live lineup. Moon was the only person present in both the photo and live lineups. Based on the identification, police contacted two other women who had been victims of similar attacks. Each victim identified Moon even though the crimes against them had been committed years before these lineups were conducted.
At trial, a serologist testified that semen stains from the crime scene definitively excluded the victim’s husband and indicated Moon could have been the source. This testimony would later prove to be patently false.
Brandon Moon spent seventeen years in prison due to false forensic testimony and
the botched handling of exculpatory DNA.
In 1989, DNA testing showed that Moon was not the source of the semen taken from the crime scene, but the results were considered inconclusive because reference samples were not collected from the victim’s husband or teenage son. Eventually, testing revealed that the victim’s husband’s DNA matched a stain on the comforter, but not the bathrobe. Additional testing proved that the son was not the source of the bathrobe stain, leaving only the rapist, whom previous tests had already revealed could not be Moon. In December 2004, Moon was released from prison.
Because of false forensic testimony and the mishandling of exculpatory DNA, Brandon Moon spent seventeen years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
