n August 1985, a woman who lived in David Shawn Pope’s apartment complex was sexually assaulted at knifepoint. Police included a photo of Pope in a photo lineup presented to the victim. Even though the victim did not identify Pope as her attacker, police suspected him based on the sound of his voice. In the days after the attack, the victim received several threatening phone calls from her attacker. In addition to an answering machine message, police recorded a phone call from the attacker lasting about ten minutes.
The victim was shown a physical lineup one month after the photo lineup in which Pope was the only man who had the blonde hair and tan skin described by the victim. The victim identified Pope as her attacker.
DNA testing proved David Pope’s innocence fifteen years after he was wrongfully convicted based on junk science.
In 1986, Pope was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sentenced to forty-five years in prison. The prosecution’s case rested primarily on the victim’s identification of Pope from the live lineup and expert testimony about “voice print analysis” that was said to match Pope’s voice to the taped calls made to the victim. The victim testified at trial that she not only recognized him as her attacker, but also that she could unequivocally identify his voice.
In January of 1999, prosecutors received an anonymous tip that someone else had committed the crime. By that time, voice print analysis was no longer considered reliable evidence, and prosecutors decided the anonymous tip warranted serious consideration. Post-conviction DNA testing proved Pope’s innocence and identified the true perpetrator: a convicted rapist imprisoned in another state. Pope was granted an official pardon by Governor Rick Perry in February 2001.
Because of faulty forensic evidence and a mistaken eyewitness identification, David Shawn Pope spent fifteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
