Jeffrey Deskovic had been convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1990 for the rape and murder of a high school classmate in New York. He was freed from prison on September 20 after DNA evidence from the crime was matched with another man who also confessed to the murder. The other man was already in prison for a murder in the same county.

The DNA evidence that did not match Deskovic was presented at his original trial. However, Deskovic had confessed to the crime to the police after six hours of questioning, and the jury chose to believe the confession over the scientific evidence. The prosecution’s theory of the case was that the DNA from the victim was the result of consensual sex with another person, and hence was unrelated to the crime and Deskovic’s involvement.

Mr. Deskovic was freed after Barry Scheck from the Innocence Project approached the Westchester County District Attorney about the case and she agreed to run the evidence through a national DNA databank. The Innocence Project reported that 184 people have been exonerated through DNA evidence since 1989.

(N.Y. Times, Sept. 21, 2006). Mr. Deskovic was tried and convicted at a time when New York did not have the death penalty; otherwise he might have been sentenced to death. Of the 123 people who have been exonerated from death row since 1973, 14 were freed as a result of DNA testing. See Innocence.