Colorado man who was wrongly convicted of rape after a woman said she saw his face in a dream is freed after 28 years

dailymail.co.uk

A Colorado man who was wrongly convicted of rape after a woman said his face had come to her in a dream beamed widely yesterday as he was finally freed from prison after a staggering 28 years.

Clarence Moses-EL locked arms with his wife, Stephanie Burke, as he walked out of Denver County jail to applause from his tearful children and grandchildren - some of whom he had never met...

In her ruling - which came after another man confessed to having sex with the woman on the night in question - the judge found that Moses-EL would likely be acquitted if his case went to trial again.

After leaving the jail yesterday, Moses-EL walked over and hugged three of his 12 grandchildren for the first time. Then, taking a deep breath of the crisp late afternoon air, he addressed reporters.

'This is the moment of my life, right here. I'm at a loss for words,' Moses-EL said.

'I just want to get home to my family.'...

Moses-EL - who has always maintained his innocence - was sentenced to 48 years in prison for raping and assaulting the woman after she returned home from a night of drinking.

When police initially asked the victim who assaulted her, she named the other man.

But more than a day after the assault, while in hospital, she identified Moses-EL as her attacker.

She told officers his face had come to her in a dream - and he was convicted.

Moses-EL's efforts to appeal his conviction were unsuccessful and the legal and political system repeatedly failed him in his decades-long attempt to win his freedom.

He won a legal bid for DNA testing on the evidence to clear his name, but Denver Police threw it away, saying they didn't see any notice from prosecutors to hold on to it.

In 2008, the governor, a former Denver prosecutor, objected to legislation that would have given him a new trial and that received widespread support from lawmakers.

Moses-EL's long-awaited break came in 2013 when L.C. Jackson - the man who the victim had originally identified as her rapist - wrote to him, admitting he had sex with the woman that night.

Jackson has not been charged in this case but is imprisoned for two other rapes in 1992.