Kevin Green

The Crime

On Sept. 30, 1979, 20-year-old Dianna Green, who was nine months pregnant, was attacked and raped in her apartment in Tustin, California. The attacker struck Ms. Green in the middle of her forehead. 

Kevin Lee Green, a 20-year-old Marine corporal, found his wife unconscious after returning home from a food run. Ms. Green was transported to the hospital in a coma.

Doctors waited 24 hours for Ms. Green to stabilize and then performed a caesarian section. The fetus was not alive, however.

Ms. Green emerged from the coma two weeks later, but was unable to speak. After about three months of speech therapy, she was able to communicate and claimed that Mr. Green had been her attacker.

In April 1980, Mr. Green was charged with second-degree murder of the baby, as well as the attempted murder of and assault with a deadly weapon on Ms. Green.

The Trial

In September 1990, Mr. Green went to trial in Orange County Superior Court.

The prosecution’s case rested almost solely on the testimony of Ms. Green, who stated that on the night of the attack, the couple quarreled after she refused to have sex with him. According to Ms. Green, the two quarreled often, and he had complained to his friends that she had stopped having sex with him after entering her eighth month of pregnancy. She also claimed that during their argument, Mr. Green hit her on the head with a key retractor and a ring of keys.

Dr. Martin Brenner, a psychiatrist, testified that Ms. Green was a reliable witness. While the defense had asked that Ms. Green be evaluated by another psychiatrist, the request was denied.

Mr. Green testified and denied committing the crime. He said that he had gone out at about 1:30 a.m. to a Jack in the Box restaurant for a hamburger. When police arrived in response to Mr. Green’s 911 call, they noted that his food was still warm.

The defense also called a Jack in the Box employee, who testified that Mr. Green had been at the restaurant and got a hamburger.

On Oct. 1, 1990, Mr. Green was found guilty by a jury of second-degree murder in the death of the stillborn child, as well as of attempted murder of and assault with a deadly weapon on Ms. Green. On Nov. 7, Mr. Green was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

In 1992, the California Court of Appeal upheld the convictions and sentence.

The Exoneration

For almost two decades, police in Tustin and nearby Costa Mesa had struggled to solve a series of sexual attacks and murders of young women dating back to the late 1970s. In the 1990s, DNA testing had been conducted on rape kits taken from the victims, but it was not until the state of California created an offender database that the male’s DNA profile was submitted.

In June of 1996, lawyers for Mr. Green were informed that the DNA profile from the spermatozoa within Ms. Green’s rape kit belonged to Gerald Parker, who also was a Marine. 

On June 20, Mr. Green’s convictions were vacated, the charges were dismissed, and he was released from prison.

Mr. Parker, who was labeled the “Bedroom Basher,” confessed to attacking Ms. Green, as well as the rapes and murders of five other women. One was murdered in 1978 and the other four were murdered in 1979, the same year Ms. Green was attacked.

In February 1997, Mr. Green was awarded $10,000 by the state of California, at that time the largest amount available under the compensation statute. In October 1999, Governor Gray Davis signed a bill awarding Mr. Green $620,000 in additional compensation.