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| DNA exonerates death row inmate |
| By Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |
| Published: 12/10/2003 |
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A Pennsylvania death row inmate became the first in the state to be exonerated by DNA evidence after prosecutors announced yesterday they would not retry him for the 1981 rape and murder of a suburban Philadelphia woman. After reading a newspaper article about DNA testing in 1989, Nicholas James Yarris, 42, became one of the earliest of the nation's death row inmates to seek the testing to prove his innocence. He is the nation's 112th death row inmate to be exonerated since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and one of about a dozen to accomplish it using DNA evidence. Yarris now hopes to be released from prison in time to celebrate Christmas at home. Whether that will happen is uncertain because Yarris' attorneys first must convince authorities that the time he's spent in Pennsylvania prisons satisfies sentences for offenses he committed in Florida after he escaped from prison in 1985. A Miami attorney will argue on his behalf that the 30-year sentence he faces in Florida was based on his status as a convicted killer and should be recalculated. "That's what everyone wants, to have him home for the holidays," said assistant federal public defender Michael Wiseman, who assisted with Yarris' efforts to win his freedom. Yarris could not speak publicly after yesterday's hearing in Media because he was quickly transported to the State Correctional Institution Greene in Waynesburg. Yarris was scheduled to stand trial a second time in January on charges that he assaulted and fatally stabbed Linda Mae Craig, 32, after abducting the mother of three from a shopping mall in December 1981. Prosecutors argued that he killed her because she resembled a girlfriend who'd dumped him. That conviction was vacated in September, however, after DNA tests showed that traces of semen found on Craig's underwear, and skin found under Craig's fingernails and on gloves near her body, could not have come from Yarris. Delaware County Deputy District Attorney Sheldon Kovach yesterday told Common Pleas Judge William R. Toal Jr. that his office lacked evidence to proceed with a second trial. Prosecutors declined to say if they still believe Yarris was involved in the slaying, but said they will continue to seek the person whose genetic profile matches the DNA samples. Investigators have compared the DNA samples to those of other possible suspects, but haven't found a match. Now they will ask the FBI to compare the samples against those in its Combined DNA Index System. So far, the FBI has not done so because the testing that ruled out Yarris was done by a private firm rather than its own lab. |
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