James Bain was exonerated on December 17, 2009, after 35 years of wrongful imprisonment in Florida. Bain has spent more years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit than any other person exonerated through DNA testing in the United States. The Innocence Project of Florida helped Bain prove his innocence of the 1974 rape of a young boy.

The nine-year-old victim was kidnapped from his home, dragged to a baseball field and raped by a man he described as having bushy sideburns and a mustache. A relative of the victim’s thought that the description sounded like James Bain. Bain’s photo was included in a lineup and the victim misidentified him. Based largely on the strength of this identification, Bain was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Still a teenager when he was wrongfully convicted, Bain was 54 years old by the time he was exonerated. He began seeking DNA testing in 2001 but was denied multiple times until the Innocence Project of Florida came to his aid.

Read more about Bain’s case on the Innocence Blog.