.jpg) Calvin Lee Scott In 1983, Calvin Lee Scott was convicted of first degree rape and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Twenty years later, Scott walked free after DNA testing proved his innocence.
The victim, a 25-year-old woman whose four-month-old son was sleeping beside her, was awakened by a noise and sat up to find a knife at her throat. The attacker demanded that she give him her purse or he would kill her child. When she said she had no money, he told her to remove her panties and proceeded to rape her while covering her face with his hand. The woman described the attacker as a black man between 5’8” and 5’11”, medium build, and with a mustache.
More than four months after the attack, the police received an anonymous phone call that led them to Scott, who was in a county jail for a larceny conviction. Scott agreed to provide samples of head hair, pubic hair, and saliva. The samples were tested by a state criminologist who testified that the hairs were microscopically consistent with those found at the crime scene. The hair analyst also cited a study by Barry Gaudette purportedly showing that the probability of a randomly chosen person having the same characteristics as another person was 1 in 4,500 for head hairs and 1 in 800 for pubic hairs.
DNA testing was eventually performed on the vaginal swab taken from the victim. The results not only excluded Scott, but matched another man who by then was incarcerated for another rape. The actual perpetrator was never charged because the statute of limitations on the crime had expired. Scott had already finished serving his time for rape but remained incarcerated for an assault while in prison.
After 20 years, Calvin Lee Scott was freed from prison. He received $150,000 in compensation.
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