Exonerated: James Calvin Tillman
After spending 18 years wrongfully imprisoned, James Calvin Tillman was released from a Connecticut prison on June 6, 2007 as a result of post-conviction DNA testing.
Tillman, who refused to accept a plea deal offered by prosecutors, was convicted of kidnapping and rape based on a mistaken eyewitness identification and crude chemical analysis of crime scene evidence. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison. While the chemical analysis available at the time of Tillman’s conviction included him with 20 percent of the male population as the possible attacker, more sophisticated modern DNA testing categorically excluded Tillman as the attacker, though it did not match any DNA in Connecticut or Federal databases.
Connecticut law allows post-conviction DNA testing for inmates seeking a new trial based on previously unavailable DNA evidence. Since DNA testing has become far more accurate in the 18 years since Tillman was wrongfully convicted, the prosecutor cooperated with the Connecticut Innocence Project to re-test old evidence with new technology.
