Haynesworth Exonerated after 27 years In Prison Thanks To Hogan Lovells' Ellen Kennedy and Thomas Widor

All along, Thomas Haynesworth maintained his innocence. He kept telling authorities he didn't commit rape and the court got it wrong. Still...he remained behind bars for more than two decades.

Thanks to DNA evidence Haynesworth, 46, has won his freedom after 27 years behind bars.

Virginia Attorney General Ken T. Cuccinelli II and two prosecutors announced this week that DNA evidence points to another man in the rapes of five women in the mid-1980s.

Haynesworth was an 18-year-old high school dropout on a shopping errand for his mother, when he was stopped and questioned by police. He didn't have a criminal record, but five women identified him as their attacker.

The man responsible for the DNA review is former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who ordered reviews of thousands of cases from 1973 to 1988. With the help of better DNA-scoping technology, the Haynesworth case was among those reviewed.

The result was that Haynesworth was cleared and that a convicted rapist named Leon Davis was implicated in the attacks.

Both Davis and Haynesworth shared the same blood type, lived in the same neighborhood and bore a slightly similar resemblance.

Hogan Lovells' Ellen Kennedy and Thomas Widor worked pro bono with prosecutors and the Innocence Project to get haynesworth released. Now the goal is an official exoneration.

Kennedy and Widor are interviewed by LBN host Scott Drake.

Read more