The elated Moses-EL said, “I feel so different than I’ve ever felt in life. I just feel good. This moment is a moment I’ve fought for a long time,” after stepping out of the courtroom acquitted.
In 1987, Denver-based black-American man Clarence Moses-EL was sent to prison where he spent 28 years after a woman approached a court, saying she dreamt that Mose-El raped her.
It was a dream, but before enough evidence was compiled, Clarence Moses-EL had spent 28 years in prison before he was released in 2016, though the victim referred to only as “T.S.” objected to it.
How it happened
1988 was the year Mosel-EL was charged and sentenced to the 48-jail term for sexually assaulting and beating a female neighbour. It was later discovered that the accuser only saw the accused in her dream.
When he was charged, he told the court that he was misidentified as the “attacker” but his evidence wasn’t sufficient to set him free at the time of the trial.
He was convicted in part because the victim said his name came to her in a dream. Incredible?
Clarence Moses-EL’s retrial
The truth emerged in 2012 when another inmate wrote Moses a letter, saying he had consensual sex with the woman and then had beaten her.
It was one of the strangest legal tussles in criminal law in the history of the United States.
During the retrial, defence lawyers argued that the new evidence combined with shifting stories from the victim, who initially identified three different men as the culprit before testifying that Moses-EL’s name came to her in a dream, merited overturning his conviction.
His lawyer also told the court that the DNA evidence that might have cleared Moses-EL was mistakenly destroyed by Denver Police.
As such, on November 14, 2016, Jurors had to spend four hours deliberating his fate before returning not guilty verdicts on first-degree sexual assault, second-degree assault, and burglary charges following a week-long trial.
According to the report, Moses-EL had exhausted all appeals of his conviction until Denver District Court Judge Kandace Gerdes agreed to set aside the conviction in 2015, that “the newly discovered evidence and the totality of the circumstances are sufficient on salient points to allow a jury to probably return a verdict of acquittal.”
“The (victim’s) dream turned into a 29-year nightmare for Mr. Moses-EL,” one of Moses-EL’s attorneys, Eric Klein was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Received $2 million in damages
The elated Moses-EL said, “I feel so different than I’ve ever felt in life. I just feel good. This moment is a moment I’ve fought for a long time,” after stepping out of the courtroom acquitted.
He was equally awarded $2 million for 28 years he spent behind bars.
The Twist:
According to a report by Denver Post, the case against Moses-EL raised several unanswered questions with it is several dramatic judicial twists. His accuser identified him as the attacker after a dream on the hospital bed because of injuries received in the incident.
Then police destroyed DNA evidence before it could be tested, later, another inmate confessed to the crime, and later recanted.
The Judge in 2016 pronounced Clarence Moses-EL “not guilty” in the retrial verdict.
Featured Image credit:
- Denver Post