Man Convicted of Rape 25 Years Ago Set Free After DNA Tests Show He Is Innocent

CHICAGO – A man who spent 25 years in prison for rape was exonerated Monday as a judge threw out his convictions because DNA evidence showed he couldn't have committed the attack. An advocacy group said it was the 200th such case.

Jerry Miller smiled and the courtroom erupted into cheers after Cook County Circuit Court Judge Diane G. Cannon read the ruling that cleared him of all charges.

Miller, 48, had been found guilty of rape, robbery, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated battery even though he testified he was at home watching television at the time of the 1981 attack. He was paroled in March 2006 and now works two jobs and lives with a family member in a Chicago suburb.

"I will get on with my life, start a life, have a life," Miller said at a news conference after the hearing. "I'm just thankful for this day."

The Innocence Project, a New York-based group, had persuaded prosecutors last year to conduct DNA tests on a semen sample taken from the rape victim's clothes. Those results excluded Miller as the attacker.

The case is the 200th in the United States in which a person was convicted and later exonerated based on DNA evidence, the group says. The first exonerations based on DNA testing were in 1989, and in all, the 200 defendants served about 2,475 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit, according to the group's Web site.

"We look at this as a learning moment," said Peter Neufeld, a co-founder of the Innocence Project and one of Miller's lawyers. "What went wrong? We have to get the answer for the future or there'll be too many Jerry Millers."

Miller was arrested in the attack on a 44-year-old woman at a Chicago parking garage in September 1981. The attacker raped her and put her in the trunk of her car, but he ran away when two attendants approached him as he tried to leave the garage.

The attendants helped authorities make a sketch and later picked Miller out of a lineup.

Now that he is exonerated, Miller no longer has to register as a sex offender.

Mark Ertler, deputy supervisor of the Cook County state's attorney's office DNA review unit, told the Chicago Tribune that the case was "a good example of what the DNA unit was intended to do."