Inmate Cleared by DNA Tests

By Bob Lewis

RICHMOND (AP) -- A mentally retarded man who spent a decade on death row for a 1982 rape and murder received a full pardon Monday from Gov. Jim Gilmore after DNA tests cleared him of the crime.

Earl Washington Jr., 40, whose death sentenced was commuted in 1994, will not be released from jail. He is serving a 30-year sentence for beating a 73-year-old woman, burglarizing her home and shooting her brother in 1983.

The DNA tests found that semen taken from the body of the victim, 19-year-old Rebecca L. Williams, did not match Washington, the governor said. The tests also found that semen from a blanket at the crime scene was that of a convicted rapist, whom authorities declined to identify.

The two semen samples did not match. Gilmore ordered state police to reopen the investigation into the slaying.

Washington was arrested following the 1993 burglary incident and later confessed to the rape and murder of Williams nearly a year earlier. He recanted his confession at trial, but was convicted and sentenced to death.

In 1994, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder commuted the sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole as a result of DNA tests that showed the presence of genetic material that belonged neither to Washington nor the victim's husband.

That test, however, did not exclude Washington. More sophisticated tests were able to prove conclusively that the DNA did not belong to Washington.

At least 70 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA evidence since the technology became available in the late 1980s, according to the New York-based Innocence Project. In some cases, including that of a Texas inmate executed last week, the tests have confirmed guilt.

Attorney Gerald Zerkin, who asked Gilmore for the pardon, said he was disappointed that the governor did not set a release date for Washington.

''Mr. Gilmore could have solved this by saying that he should have been paroled many years ago and could have reduced it to time served,'' Zerkin said. ''We think he was eligible by about 1993.''

Zerkin said it could take months for the case to come before the state Parole Board.

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