VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) — Clark County prosecutors are dismissing charges against two men in a 1993 rape case because newly tested DNA evidence didn’t match either of them.
Larry W. Davis and Alan G. Northrop were convicted in the attack on a housekeeper cleaning a home in La Center, and they spent 17 years in prison. Davis was released in January with time off for good behavior, and Northrop was released in April, when a judge vacated their convictions.
The Columbian reports that prosecutors will dismiss the charges against the men on Wednesday.
The victim identified the pair as her attackers, though she was blindfolded during it. The Innocence Project Northwest at the University of Washington Law School took up their case and requested in 2005 that testing be performed on pieces of crime scene evidence that couldn’t be tested back in 1993 because of the lack of technology.
DNA evidence taken from the woman’s fingernail scrapings, pubic hair and other crime scene items didn’t match either defendant.
