In 1978, David Gray was charged and sentenced to 60 years in prison for the rape of an Illinois woman in her home. Gray maintained his innocence for 20 years before he attained the testing to prove it.

The victim was 58 years old when she was attacked and died while Gray was in prison. She was raped and stabbed 33 times, but survived the attack. Three days before the crime, Gray had come to her home to see a motorcycle that her son was selling. She later identified Gray as her attacker. Except for the identification, there was little other evidence. His first trial ended in a hung jury. At a second trial, however, the identification was supplemented with testimony from a jailhouse snitch who claimed that Gray had confessed to him. Gray was found guilty. Citing a prior sexual assault conviction, the judge doubled his sentence.

The snitch no longer recalls the admission from Gray about which he had testified. After 20 years in prison, DNA testing in June of 1998 showed that the semen recovered from a quilt found at the scene of the rape excluded Gray. In deciding whether to retry Gray or drop the charges, the State Attorney maintained his belief in Gray’s guilt and argued that, because semen was not found inside the victim, the quilt sample that excluded Gray was irrelevant. Further testing, however, also excluded the victim’s husband, and Gray’s conviction was eventually overturned in 1999.