Man imprisoned for 28 YEARS after woman dreamed that he raped her to be freed

[Feeling the Bern]

Man imprisoned for 28 YEARS after woman dreamed that he raped her to be freed after another man confesses

A man imprisoned for 28 years after a woman said she dreamed that he raped her could be freed after a Denver judge overturned his conviction, saying he would likely be acquitted at a new trial because someone else confessed to the crime.

Clarence Moses-EL was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to 48 years in prison for raping and assaulting a woman when she returned home from a night of drinking. When police initially asked who attacked her, she named the man who later confessed.

More than a day after the assault, while in the hospital, the woman identified Moses-EL as her attacker, saying his face came to her in a dream.

Moses-EL has long claimed he was innocent. But his efforts to appeal his conviction were unsuccessful, in part because Denver police threw away DNA evidence from the attack. Police destroyed body swabs and the victim's clothing despite a judge's order to preserve it for testing that could have confirmed Moses-EL's guilt or innocence.

How fucked up is this?

So, let me get this right.

1: Woman gets drunk.
2: Woman gets raped.
3: Woman has dream about attacker.
4: DNA evidence is thrown out.
5: Man loses 28 years of his life.
6: Man is actually innocent.
7: Instead of being freed, Colorado decides to retry him for a crime he didn't commit.

Am I the only one who sees a major fucking problem here?

I hope he sues the pants off everyone involved, even the victim, who clearly lied!

[Democat]

1. Evidence is important

Many people are willing to convict without evidence.

[Feeling the Bern]

2. She had a dream. Isn't that enough?

[Skittles]

3. considering the percentage of rapes that actually end in a conviction of ANY kind

the premise sounds utterly ridiculous

[C Moon]

4. It's fucked up AND scary. Wow!

[nxylas]

5. Aaaand he's African-American

I somehow knew that was the case even before I saw his photo. I must be clairvoyant.

[Xipe Totec]

6. THAT is so deeply embarrassing to me

I just don't know where to hide my face.

[Oneironaut]

15. Every time something like this happens, they're always black.

Every time. It's like clockwork.

Racism is dead

[The2ndWheel]

18. Maybe eveyone involved in this was black?

Is the woman black? Are the other people she named black? Maybe they're not, I don't know, but saying it's racism with no information is like putting a guy in jail based on a dream.

[ohnoyoudidnt]

25. I don't know about the others involved, but somehow I doubt the jury was black.

Either way, the case is really messed up. It's very disturbing how innocent people can get convicted with no real evidence.

[nxylas]

26. The victim might not have been motivated by racism

But how likely is it that a white man would have been convicted and served 28 years in prison based on such flimsy "evidence"?

[TipTok]

28. A moderate google search turns up zilch for the identity of the woman...

Just that she was a neighbor a few houses down.

Convenient that she kept her privacy.

[Enthusiast]

7. This is fucking horrible.

[Ohio Joe]

8. YEAH... Lets never believe a woman who was raped again!!1!

Or maybe... We could look at a slightly less MRA-ish source of what happened in this old case.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_29298107/man-granted-new-trial-denver-rape-case-due

It's a shame what happened to this guy but blaming the victim is just as shitty.

[mythology]

9. She is responsible for her testimony

And in this case, the guy who just spent 28 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit is the victim. Is she the only one responsible for that? No. But she is partially responsible.

[Ohio Joe]

10. YEAH... Never believe a woman who is beaten and raped!!1!

[ProfessorPlum]

11. oh FFS

victims of crimes can be wrong about who committed them. No one is saying she wasn't raped, but finding the correct perpetrator is important, wouldn't you say?

[GummyBearz]

19. Nah

If there is a crime against a female you just need to find any male and convict them ASAP. He is guilty by gender association. Case closed

[LanternWaste]

20. It's fun to pretend as much... regardless of how absurd the pretension may be.

It's fun to pretend as much... regardless of how absurd the pretension may be. Doing so certainly allows one to validate their biases.

[GummyBearz]

21. There are multiple biases in this case

So I'm not sure which you are referring to. Could be the male thing, or that it was a black male. Either way, he deserves justice for his lost time

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. No, the OP is not 'MRA-ish' at all

The same problem is in your link too:

In 1987, when police, her sister and a neighbor asked who had attacked her, the woman gave three possibilities: "LC, Earl, Darnell." A couple of days later, however, she told police for the first time that Moses-EL, a neighbor, was her attacker.

His identity had come to her in a dream, she said.
...
With help from fellow inmates, Moses-EL collected enough money to conduct DNA testing on the evidence. A judge approved the request, but police mistakenly destroyed the evidence before it could be analyzed

Pointing out they used evidence from her dream, and that she had earlier named other people, and that the evidence that could have exonerated him, is not 'MRA'. It was the victim who named him, and from a dream. She does bear some of the responsibility for his conviction, though the prosecutors and police should have said "dreams don't count".

[Ohio Joe]

16. 1 woman gets drunk

Nuf said.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Which is relevant to why she gave 3 names to identify who might have raped her

and why the 4th name she gave would be no better as evidence - though coming 'in a dream' should have meant it was ignored completely.

[Downtown Hound]

14. No one ever said let's never believe a woman who was raped

In fact, no one ever said they didn't believe the woman at all. Maybe that was the problem. It should take more than a dream to steal somebody's life away from them. Cops are well aware that eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate, yet in this case, they threw out all physical evidence and relied solely on a dream. Yeah, some great police work there, boys.

And I'm going to argue that this innocent man that had his life stolen from him is just as big if not a bigger victim than she is here. At least his pursuit of justice didn't ruin an innocent person's life. She may be a victim but she also wrongfully destroyed somebody's life. Victim or not, she bears some responsibility for that.

[Ohio Joe]

22. No... She does not

That she had a dream was one bit that she told investigators. It was not the sole evidence that got a conviction. I would bet it had no impact on the juries guilty verdict. The woman did not make the arrest, bring the charges, try the case, come up with a verdict or pass the sentance. She does not bear any responsibilty for what happened to the guy.

[Downtown Hound]

23. If you wrongfully finger somebdoy, especially based on a dream

then yes, you share some responsibility for what happened. Sorry. I do believe that the majority of the blame lies with the police, but she's not free and clear. Being a victim does not absolve you of responsibility for your actions for the rest of your life. You seem to think the fact that she was raped means that she can say anything about anybody and it's okay because she's a victim. Do you have any sympathy for the man who lost most of his life due to this woman's dream other than saying "it sucks what happened to him?"

[TorchTheWitch]

31. I'm curious as to why you think she wrongfully fingered him on purpose?

or that she had "fingered" him at all?

It was dark, she'd had too much to drink, she was having her face bashed in while being raped leaving her permanently blinded in one eye. Why do you imagine that she EVER could have gotten a good enough look at the perp going through all that? And when in her nightmares about the incident this innocent person's face appeared as the perp... she very well could have BELIEVED that was who it was. Acute trauma can do very fucked up things to peoples' minds.

What went wrong here was the police/DA's office. She TOLD people that one of three men could have been the perp. One of those three men she first named, Jackson, was questioned and TOLD investigators that the day of the attack he "had sex with her" and hit her. Then he later denied that. She did the right thing telling the police about who the man in her nightmares about the incident was. It wasn't HER fault if she believed that herself, or that she told the police that... it was the police/DA's office that ran with it, and wrongfully shaped the case around that while "losing" physical evidence, ignoring the fact that the innocent man convicted had a blood type that did NOT match that of the evidence (the DNA evidence wasn't part of the trial as there was no such thing at that time... it was introduced after the conviction, and a new trial was denied because the evidence was "lost&quot , and that the ACTUAL perp confessed to "having sex with her" and HITTING her THAT day.

The DA's office focused on the wrong man, even when the mostly likely one to have committed the crime was known. Imagining that it was her nightmare that was ALL of the evidence presented is ridiculous, and we don't know if she BELIEVED that she had fingered the right person or not, and I have no doubt that the police/DA's office did everything they possibly could to convince her that the man she saw in her nightmares was the perp, and of COURSE they would have put an expert on the stand swearing that what she recollected from her nightmares was what in FACT occurred.

This is hardly the first time a DA's office has gone after the "easier" suspect rather than the most likely one. It's par for the course, and once they get a conviction they AND judges are loath to admit they might have screwed up. They DON'T CARE if the wrong person goes to jail as long as SOMEONE does.

After what this poor woman went through, she's the LAST person to blame especially when the police had a FAR more likely suspect that admitted to having "had sex with her" and hit her THAT DAY and was also one of the three men she first named. Blame the system, blame the asshole that raped and beat her so badly, lied about it, and went on to rape again only having a "come to Jesus" moment 28 years later while in prison for having done it again and who knows how many more times in the intervening years. The poor innocent man that's taken the rap all these years isn't blaming her. Why are you?

[Downtown Hound]

32. I blame her because it's stupid to rely on dreams

Dreams are not reality. If she had a hard time seeing her attacker then that's what her story should have been, not "I dreamed about this one guy doing it."

Beyond that, I agree with you that this was an idiotic prosecution, and that's where most of the blame lies.

Hey! Last night I had a dream that it was this one guy who broke into my fiancé's house a few years ago. Maybe I'll go tell the cops about it.

[Act_of_Reparation]

12. "Clearly"

[malaise]

24. I only have one question

Is he African-American?

[bermudat]

27. Hmmm, I'm guessing yes.

[TipTok]

30. Weren't the other men that she named also AA?

[Bradical79]

29. I can't agree with suing the victim

A woman who has gone through the most traumatic experiences possible can't be blamed for some mental instability. The brain does weird things to try to sort out information. I think this can be laid 100% on the police, prosecutor, the original judge, and the jury for taking "I saw his face in a dream" as enough reason to get a guy locked up. There's no way that statement should have convinced any of these people that a case should proceed against him.

[KamaAina]

33. Our long national nightmare is over.