Michael Anthony Green was convicted of a 1983 Houston rape he didn’t commit. He served 27 years in prison before DNA testing proved his innocence and led to his release in 2010. His exoneration became official when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court, granted his writ of habeas corpus on October 20, 2010.
 
The Crime
On April 18, 1983, a woman talking on a pay phone with her husband was abducted at gunpoint by two men at a Greenspoint-area gas station after midnight.  They forced her into a car with two other men. The abductors drove the victim to a secluded area, where three of them sexually assaulted her. The fourth man did not participate.  The four men drove off and left the victim behind.
 
The Identification and Investigation
Later that night, officers searched for the stolen car where the assault took place.  When police spotted the car and pulled it over, the four assailants fled.  Police then began stopping all black men walking in the area, and in the process, detained Green and another young black male.  Green and the other man were left in a police car that night, illuminated by headlights, while the victim was brought to the scene.   However, she did not identify either man as being among those who had assaulted her.
 
About a week later, Green was arrested for stealing a car in an unrelated incident and pleaded guilty to evading arrest.  Police showed the victim a photo array that included Green, and she indicated that he may have been one of her attackers.  Later that day, she picked him out of a lineup of five men.
 
The Trial
At the age of 18, Green was charged with aggravated sexual assault.   He turned down a plea bargain that would have enabled him to serve five years for the rape.  There was no physical evidence tying him to the scene of the crime, nor were there any eyewitnesses aside from the victim.   In court, the victim again identified Green as one of her attackers.  Based on this misidentification, a jury found him guilty of aggravated sexual assault and he was sentenced to 75 years in prison.
 
Post-Conviction Appeal and Exoneration
Green launched a series of appeals to overturn the conviction to no avail.  His motion for post-conviction DNA testing languished for three years until Patricia Lykos was elected district attorney of Harris County in 2008 and formed the Post-Conviction Review Section to examine cases like Green’s.
 
Most of the evidence from Green’s case had been destroyed.  However, investigators from the Post-Conviction Review Section were able to uncover one piece of evidence from the crime – a pair of jeans worn by the victim during the assault.  Not only did DNA testing on the jeans exclude Green, but two of the DNA profiles matched two men who had already been imprisoned for other crimes – Michael A. Smith and David Elder.  During questioning, Elder identified the two other men involved in the rape as Lawrence Mosley, who was also serving time for an unrelated crime, and Timothy Washington.  Because the statute of limitations had expired, none of the four men can be charged for the rape.  On July 30, 2010, Green was finally freed from prison after serving 27 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit.