Larry Fuller
Larry Fuller spent over 18 years in prison, after being wrongfully convicted of aggravated rape in 1981.He was convicted as the result of an erroneous identification, despite the fact that he had a full beard at the time and the victim remembered the attacker as having no facial hair. Fuller was excluded as the rapist though advanced DNA testing methods Governor Rick Perry granted Fuller a full pardon in January 2007.
On the morning of April 26, 1981, a 37-year-old woman was attacked in her apartment in Dallas, Texas by a black man wielding a knife. He cut her several times, raped her, and then ran away. The victim was taken to the hospital, and a rape kit was collected. Motile sperm were recovered on her vaginal swabs and slides. The attack happened 45 minutes before sunrise, and the victim testified that it was dark in the room, although she was able to ascertain that the attacker was a black male “somewhere in his twenties” and that she had never seen him before. She also testified that she did not remember any facial hair on the attacker.
Two days after the attack, police showed the victim a photo array, which included Larry Fuller’s picture and five other black males. Fuller’s photograph was included because of an incident that occurred three months earlier.
In this previous incident, on the morning of January 19, 1981, another woman had been similarly raped, just a few buildings down from the victim of the April rape. After the January attack, Fuller was stopped because he matched the victim’s description, but when his photograph was placed in a photo array, the January victim positively stated that none of the men in the photo array was the attacker. Another man, Larry James Johnson confessed to the January crime and was arrested and prosecuted. At the time of the April rape, Fuller was a decorated Vietnam War veteran and was raising two young children with his girlfriend while pursuing an education in the arts. He had no previous record of sex crimes.
When presented with the photo array, the victim of the April rape failed to conclusively identify Fuller as her attacker, and the investigating officer issued a report recommending that the investigation be suspended because the victim “was unsure of the suspect at this time.” However, on May 3, 1981, police showed the victim another photo array. Fuller’s photograph was the only one that was included in both photo arrays. The second photograph was a more recent one of Fuller, taken that day, only a week after the crime.
The victim was alarmed to see that Fuller had a heavy and distinct beard because she had stated that she didn’t remember any facial hair on the attacker, but she placed her fingers over the bottom half the photograph and positively identified him. The victim later stated, “I looked at it, and I knew that was the face; but I couldn’t figure out why there was facial hair because I didn’t remember the facial hair…I looked at the picture again and I put my finger over the part, the hair, and then I could identify him.”
At trial, the prosecution relied on the eyewitness identification, saying that the victim had “never wavered” in her identification. The victim also positively identified Fuller in court. In addition, the prosecution introduced misleading expert testimony regarding serological testing of semen from the rape kit collected from the victim. In 1981, DNA testing technology was not very developed, and elementary tests were performed on the semen evidence at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences. Forensic serologist Benita Haywood testified that Fuller was a non-secretor, and that the O antigen she detected in the semen showed the source of the semen could have been a non-secretor, which excluded 80% of the general population.
In fact, Fuller’s attorneys later argued that, because the O result matched the victim’s own blood type, no man could have been excluded as a potential semen source by this elementary DNA testing method. However, the prosecution argued that the semen evidence was consistent with Fuller’s to the exclusion of 80% of the population.
The defense called Fuller’s girlfriend, who testified Fuller was at their house at the time of the attack. Despite his alibi, on August 25, 1981, Fuller was convicted of aggravated rape after only 35 minutes of jury deliberation. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison on September 10, 1981.
Fuller wrote the Innocence Project in the mid 1990s, and they took on his case. In 1999, after having served 18 years of his sentence, Fuller was released on parole, though he was sent back to prison in 2005 for a parole violation. In November 2000, the Innocence Project located the biological evidence at Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences and requested that the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office consent to post-conviction DNA testing. In March 2001, the Office refused, noting that the Texas legislature was considering a new DNA statute and wanting to wait for the statutory criteria.
In August 2001, the Innocence Project again requested testing under Texas’ new post-conviction DNA statute, but the state opposed testing. However, after a hearing in judicial court, the judge ordered, on September 4, 2002, for testing to take place at the Department of Public Safety.
Unfortunately, DPS was unable to obtain the profile of the male DNA on the vaginal slide, and in November 2004, the Innocence Project renewed its request to the District Attorney’s Office for more-developed DNA testing using another method. On April 14, 2006, the District Attorney’s Office agreed, and the Court ordered Y-STR testing at Orchid Cellmark, a private laboratory. Y-STR testing conclusively excluded Fuller as the source of the semen.
At a hearing on October 31, 2006 in the 203rd Judicial District Court in Dallas, Judge Lana McDaniel released Fuller, ruling that it was probable that Fuller would not have been convicted if the DNA results had been available at trial. Although not involved in the original case, the judge said she felt sick to her stomach over the time he spent in prison for a crime he did not commit.
On January 25, 2007, Fuller received a full pardon from Texas Governor Rick Perry. He is the tenth person from Dallas County to be exonerated by DNA evidence in the last five years.
In their motion on Fuller’s behalf in district court, attorneys from the Innocence Project stated, “A new technology, DNA testing, has proven [Larry Fuller’s] innocence, but the procedures which led to this mistaken identification are, in light of new social science evidence, conducive to producing error and continue to cry out for reform.”
