It seems ludicrous to suggest that a man who spent the last 14 years of his life in prison for a crime he didn't commit is somehow blessed by good fortune.
Odd as that sounds, though, that's the case with Joseph Abbitt, a 49-year-old Winston-Salem man who shortly after 2 p.m. yesterday finally walked out of the Forsyth County Jail a free man.
DNA evidence preserved for years by the Winston-Salem Police Department -- even though the law didn't require it until 2001 -- ultimately set in motion the events that led to Abbitt's release after his 1995 conviction for raping two teenage sisters.
As recently as the late 1990s, evidence was routinely destroyed by police and clerks of court after a convicted criminal had exhausted his appeals. For some reason, decision-makers in the Winston-Salem Police Department made it policy to preserve the evidence that they collected, even though it cost city taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars to do so.
"There are countless cases where we would be able to definitively prove someone's innocence or confirm their guilt, but it's all been destroyed," said Christine Mumma, the director of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence.
Left unsaid was the fact that if the DNA samples had been destroyed, Abbitt would be still sitting in prison serving what he characterized yesterday as a "death sentence" -- something that he is well aware of.
"Yes, sir, I do," Abbitt said when asked if he somehow felt fortunate that evidence wasn't destroyed. "I feel I was blessed."
A good investment
Time and again throughout the course of yesterday's real-life drama, such words as "fortunate" and "blessed" were used.
Prosecutors, police, defense attorneys and members of Abbitt's family all touched on variations of that theme.
"Frankly, I was surprised that they would keep the material for that long," David Hall, an assistant district attorney for Forsyth County, said in the courtroom while summarizing the state's reasons for pushing for Abbitt's release.
"We were very fortunate in this case that when questions came up, we were able to go to our warehouse and find the evidence," said Scott Cunningham, the chief of police. "Once cases clear appeals, most police departments cleared their warehouses out."
"We do feel blessed," said Doris Thompson, Abbitt's older sister. "It gives us some faith in the law." When District Attorney Tom Keith first heard from Mumma's organization that Abbitt might indeed be innocent of the charges, his thoughts ran toward the evidence and whether it could be found in the warehouses where the city stores such things.
"I'm thinking, ‘I hope you have some of that (DNA) left,'" Keith said. "They keep that stuff from the beginning of time, and they didn't have to. I'd say that it's a very good investment for the city and Mr. Abbitt."
Pray for the victims
As difficult as it is to say the day after an innocent man walked free from prison, the system worked the way that it was designed to work -- not the way it's supposed to, but the way it's designed to.
That's an important and tragic distinction.
The state presented a strong case: The victims identified Abbitt as their attacker. Police learned that he had been in their house previously. Abbitt fled the state when it became evident that he was going to be arrested, and stayed out of sight for about two years before he was caught in Texas in July 1993.
Most unfortunately, the DNA technology that existed in the mid-1990s was nowhere near as advanced as it is today -- the final nail in a perfect storm of a case.
Yet despite all that, the preservation of that same DNA and scientific advances eventually led to his rightful release. If he had been convicted in 1955 rather than 1995, Abbitt surely would have died in prison proclaiming his innocence.
He didn't, thank God. And on the day that Abbitt was cleared, some of his first thoughts were for the victims. He hopes that the same scientific advances that led to his release will lead to another twist of good fortune -- the arrest and conviction of the real rapist.
"They are still the victims of this crime," he said.
■ Scott Sexton can be reached at 727-7481 or at ssexton@wsjournal.com.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement