DNA testing clears man who served 28 years

DNA testing clears man who served 28 years
By SARAH KARUSH (AP)


WASHINGTON — A man who spent 28 years in prison for a rape and murder has been freed after DNA testing showed he's innocent.

Fifty-eight-year-old Donald Eugene Gates left the federal prison in Tucson, Ariz., on Tuesday, just hours after a Washington judge ordered his release.

Gates tells The Associated Press it feels "beautiful" to be free. He says his faith in God helped him get through his incarceration.

Judge Fred Ugast, who presided over Gates' trial, ordered his release just hours before.

Gates was convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of 21-year-old Catherine Schilling.

Recent testing showed Gates is not a match for DNA found on Schilling's body and the work of an FBI forensic analyst involved in the investigation has been called into question.

Blog Editor's Note:

A special FBI agent, Michael Malone, told jurors that two pubic hairs found on Schilling’s body were “microscopically identical” to a sample taken from Gates. Prosecutors also presented testimony from a convicted felon who claimed Gates’ confessed the crime to him shortly after it occurred. Finally, another woman testified that Gates had also tried to rob her in the park 19 days before the murder.

According to Gates’ lawyers — PDS attorneys Sandra Levick, Parisa Dehgani-Tafti and Katherine Philpott — it later surfaced that Malone had given false testimony in a series of murder cases across the country. He was singled out in a report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, and his record was the subject of a a Wall Street Journal investigation. Malone later admitted to lying on the stand in a death penalty case in Florida, the defense wrote.

During a review of Malone’s work, the Justice Department asked the District’s U.S. Attorney’s Office to look at the Gates’ case. In 2003, a forensic scientist found that Malone’s lab report was not supported by his notes. Defense lawyers claim those findings were passed on to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, but never were revealed to Gates’ counsel.

In a response dated yesterday, U.S. Attorney’s Office said its special proceedings division never received the report on Malone’s work, and that it was investigating the matter.