Virginia AG Uses Rare 'Writ of Innocence' to Ask Court to Release Prisoner
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, in papers filed with the Virginia Court of Appeals on Tuesday, said that a prisoner, who prosecutors now believe was wrongly accused of committing a series of rapes more than two decades ago, should be freed.
Thomas Haynesworth, 45, should be released from prison and have his convictions erased, Cuccinelli wrote, reports the Washington Post.
Haynesworth has spent the past 27 years in a Virginia prison for a string of rapes and other attacks on women, the Washington Post reports.
Authorities believe that Haynesworth, initially thought to be behind several attacks on women in a Richmond neighborhood in 1984, was wrongly identified by numerous victims.
DNA testing has cleared Haynesworth of two rapes and instead implicated convicted rapist Leon Davis, who called himself the “Black Ninja.” No DNA evidence is available in the two other attacks for which Haynesworth was convicted, but Haynesworth’s lawyers argue that the existing evidence in those cases indicates that their client is innocent.
Cuccinelli is backing Haynesworth’s petition for a “writ of actual innocence,” a state law that lets prisoners introduce new evidence of their innocence, the Washington Examiner reports.
