On a frigid December night in 1989, Darryl Pinkins and Roosevelt Glenn stood on the shoulder of an Indiana highway. Coworker William Durden had been driving them home, until his car broke down. The stranded men set off for help.
Unbeknownst to them, five gang members were cruising along the same Lake County road. They broke into Durden’s car and stole a bag of work coveralls. Later that night, the criminals deliberately bumped into a moving vehicle. After the car stopped, all five gangsters raped the driver. They covered her with a stolen coverall, and drove away.
Linked through the stolen coverall clothing, Durden, Pinkins and Glenn were arrested and tried for the gang rape. Durden was acquitted. But in 1991, Pinkins was convicted and sentenced to 65 years in prison, torn from his family and unborn son. Two years later, after a second trial, Glenn was sent away for 35 years.
Glenn’s older sister Renitta reached out to Professor Frances Watson at Indiana University. Watson directs the Indianapolis law school’s Wrongful Conviction clinic. She arranged for a private DNA laboratory to test the victim’s jacket and sweater. In 2001, the lab reported two unknown men on the clothing semen stains.
But the DNA did not persuade the court hearing Pinkins and Glenn’s appeal. Two DNA unknowns, plus three tried defendants – that could add up to five rapists. To exonerate, the law wanted to see all five DNA unknowns, one for each rapist. Two were not enough.
Traditional methods of DNA interpretation are limited, and do not use all the data. Imagine a medical world without doctors, where technicians take superb X-ray images, but there are no radiologists to read them. Techs can diagnose a broken bone, but they will miss subtler disease. In the same way, crime labs mainly report obvious DNA evidence.
Most DNA evidence is a mixture of two or more people. The Indiana victim’s jacket semen stain was a mixture of her DNA, along with two other people. The lab could see a large amount of DNA from one man, but not the small amount from someone else. Nor could they fully interpret the DNA mixture from the victim’s sweater.
Artificial intelligence (AI) extends the power of the human mind. Smart computers can use mathematics to dig deeper into buried data and uncover the truth.
I founded Cybergenetics in Pittsburgh in 1994. The company’s TrueAllele AI system unmixes DNA mixtures to show whether or not someone left their DNA at a crime scene. With over forty studies validating the method, courts accept the science as reliable.
The 2001 DNA evidence remained silent for 14 years. Until Boise State Professor Greg Hampikian, Director of the Idaho Innocence Project, told Professor Watson about Cybergenetics probabilistic genotyping technology. She sent her DNA data files for pro bono computer re-interpretation. In 2015, our computer analysis gave a new voice to the old evidence.
TrueAllele found that Pinkins and Glenn did not leave their DNA on the jacket and sweater semen stains. The convicted men were not the source of a hair found at the crime scene. Unmixing the mixtures, the computer discovered five unknown people in the clothing and hair. And that three of the true rapists were brothers, unlike the unrelated defendants. Reawakening dormant data, as no other technology could, the computer proved actual innocence1.
In April 2016, I was preparing to testify about these new findings at Pinkins’ post-conviction hearing in Indiana. After lecturing on this exculpatory DNA evidence at Duquesne Law School, I received a text from Professor Watson. The Lake County District Attorney had accepted our new DNA findings. The hearing was canceled, with the DA filing to vacate Pinkins’ conviction.
On April 25, 2016, after 24 years behind bars for a crime he did not commit, Darryl Pinkins walked out of prison a free man. CBS television captured the emotional scene in their 48 Hours episode “Guilty Until Proven Innocent.” Embraced by family and friends, the Navy veteran was finally reunited with his wife and children. His son, unborn when Darryl was imprisoned, was 24 years old.
Wrongfully convicted Roosevelt Glenn was there as well. He had been released back in 2009, after serving 16 years and 8 months. Prison gangs had protected him, believing his claims of innocence. Based on Cybergenetics’ report, Glenn was exonerated in January of 2017. So far, TrueAllele has helped exonerate ten innocent men2.
Glenn gave the keynote address at a Justice Through Science conference in 20173. He told of his mother’s relief in seeing his name finally cleared, just before she died. Cybergenetics “ended human suffering,” said Professor Watson. “The world knows he’s innocent”4.
Anyone can be falsely accused of a serious crime. DNA evidence that should reveal truth is often silenced by ineffective data analysis. Crime labs mistakenly report informative DNA as “inconclusive,” closing the door on critical evidence, instead of opening a path for justice.
Pinkins and Glenn lost 40 years of freedom to laboratory limitations. But advanced computing reached into the DNA data, and pulled out the truth that exonerated these innocent men5.
Photo: TrueAllele exonerees Roosevelt Glenn and Darryl Pinkins in 2018 at Indiana University McKinney School of Law’s Wrongful Conviction Day conference.
DNA Matters, a monthly column, discusses cases that have been aided by the power of computer software in DNA analysis. It is authored by Dr. Mark Perlin, M.D., Ph.D., chief scientist, executive and founder at Cybergenetics. Twenty years ago, Perlin invented TrueAllele probabilistic genotyping for automated human identification from DNA mixtures. His company helped identify victim remains in the World Trade Center disaster, and has helped exonerate 10 innocent men. He is a Scholar in Residence at Duquesne University’s Forensic Science and Law program, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. © Mark Perlin 2021
References
1. Mark Perlin. “Hidden DNA evidence: exonerating the innocent”, Forensic Magazine, 15(1):10-12, 2018.
2. TrueAllele Exonerations, Cybergenetics Website. https://www.cybgen.com/news/exoneration/page.shtml
3. Roosevelt Glenn. “Innocent Nightmare – 17 years in prison, exonerated by modern DNA”, Keynote Exoneree Address, Bringing Modern DNA Evidence into the Courtroom CLE conference, Justice Through Science®, Pittsburgh, PA, 2017.
4. Indiana University Law Professor Frances Watson talks about the impact TrueAllele had on the lives of exonerees Darryl Pinkins and Roosevelt Glenn. Pittsburgh, PA, 2017.
5. Mark Perlin. “Probabilistic genotyping to the rescue for Pinkins and Glenn”, Wrongful Conviction Day, Indiana University McKinney School of Law, Indianapolis, IN, October, 2018.