Marlon Pendleton

On November 20, 2006, Marlon Pendleton walked out of prison for the first time since he was convicted 10 years earlier. On December 8, 2006, he was officially exonerated after post-conviction DNA testing proved his innocence of rape and robbery.

The Crime
In the early morning hours of October 3, 1992, the victim, a home health care nurse, walked to her bus stop on the south side of Chicago. A man with a gun forced her into an abandoned building and raped and robbed her.

The Identification
Six months after the crime, the victim saw a police sketch on television that she thought looked like the man who raped her. She called police, and they brought her in for a lineup identification procedure. She identified Marlon Pendleton as the man who raped her.

At trial, the victim testified that her attacker weighed about 170 pounds. At the time of the crime, Pendleton weighed about 135 pounds.

The Biological Evidence
Pamela Fish, a Chicago Police Department Crime Laboratory Analyst, found seminal fluid on the vaginal swabs. However, she reported that the biological evidence in Pendleton’s case was insufficient for DNA testing. This claims would later be called into question.

The Defense
Pendleton testified that he was at home with his parents at the time of the rape, a claim that his parents affirmed.

Post-Conviction
The Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law took on Pendleton’s case in 2005 and was able to arrange DNA testing on the vaginal swab collected as part of the victim’s rape kit. Pendleton was excluded as the source of spermatozoa from the vaginal swab on November 22, 2006. He was released from prison on November 30, 2006. On December 8, 2006, he reported back to court where his conviction was vacated and the district attorney dropped all charges in this case.

The lab analyst who conducted the DNA testing that exonerated Pendleton told a reporter after Pendleton’s exoneration that he believed there should have been enough biological material for Pamela Fish to test at the time of the trial. In at least seven other postconviction DNA exonerations, the exonerated and their attorneys have alleged that faulty analysis or testimony by Pamela Fish led to their wrongful convictions.