3 convicted in state cleared, Innocence Project says

Ted Bradford spent nearly 10 years in prison after falsely confessing to raping a woman in Yakima in 1995.

Larry Davis and Alan Northrop each spent more than 15 years behind bars after a Clark County rape victim wrongly identified them as her attackers.

The three Washington state men, whose names were cleared this year through post-conviction DNA testing, are among 29 who were exonerated or whose convictions were overturned in 2010 as a result of pro-bono work done on their behalf by attorneys affiliated with the Innocence Network.

The network is made up of 63 individual organizations, including the Innocence Project Northwest at the University of Washington School of Law. The vast majority of Innocence Projects are in the U.S., but the network now has nine chapters in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and England.

On Monday, the Innocence Network released its annual report, pointing out troubling problems in the criminal-justice system. Witness misidentifications, faulty forensic science and misconduct by police and prosecutors were highlighted in the 2010 cases as reasons for a number of wrongful convictions. Of the 29 cases, 27 were from across the United States, and two were from Canada.

"Twenty-nine is a large number" given that most cases "take years to achieve an exoneration," said Keith Findley, president of the Innocence Network.

Clearing people wrongly convicted isn't just important for the individual "but for the integrity of the criminal-justice system" so citizens can trust "that the system is doing the best it can to separate the innocent from the guilty" and will fix mistakes when they are uncovered, he said.

Jackie McMurtrie, a UW associate law professor and the director of the Innocence Project Northwest, said attorneys and law students began working in 2002 on the Bradford and Davis-Northrop cases. "It took an extraordinarily long period of time to get them vindicated," she said.

A false confession in the Bradford case and faulty eyewitness identifications in the Davis-Northrop case sent innocent men to prison, McMurtrieshe said.

The federal government, the District of Columbia and 23 states compensate people who've been wrongly convicted, but Washington is not one of them, McMurtrie said.

In 1996, after a nine-hour police interrogation, Bradford confessed to raping a young mother in her Yakima home six months earlier. Bradford contacted the Innocence Project Northwest after serving his entire prison sentence, which, had his conviction stood, would have required him to register as a sex offender.

After the state Court of Appeals overturned Bradford's conviction in 2007, he was recharged by the Yakima County prosecutor and stood trial a second time for rape and burglary earlier this year. In February, it took a jury only five hours to find him not guilty.

Felix Luna, a Seattle civil attorney who represented Bradford on behalf of the Innocence Project, said Bradford's confession contained 35 material errors, and his confession was a result of "psychological coercion" on the part of police.

At the time of Bradford's conviction, DNA tests could only be done on blood and semen, Luna explained. The Innocence Project successfully sought DNA testing on electrical tape that was used to block the eye holes on a Lone Ranger-style mask the rapist forced his victim to wear during the attack, Luna said. The tests revealed that epithelial cells found on the sticky side of the tape did not belong to Bradford, he said.

Now living with his girlfriend in Yakima, Bradford is working part time as a laborer and trying to rebuild relationships with his two children, who were toddlers when he went to prison, Luna said.

"This is one of the most satisfying things I've ever done," he said of helping Bradford clear his name.

Davis and Northrop were also cleared through DNA tests. The men were wrongly identified by a blindfolded rape victim as her assailants in 1993 in La Center, Clark County. Davis spent nearly 16 years in prison, and Northrop spent 17 years behind bars. Three years ago, a judge agreed to further DNA testing, which eventually proved that none of the biological samples found at the crime scene matched either man.

"Even after their release, they continue to struggle," McMurtrie said of the three men. "All are trying to reconnect with family and friends they left behind when they went to prison. But with all three, they all had family members who believed in their innocence and stuck by them."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com