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So Donald Trump Just Invited a Hamas Supporter to the Debate Tomorrow Night

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Timothy Watson10/19/2016 5:13:10 am PDT
Lawyers contend DNA testing on recently discovered evidence proves the innocence of an Ivy man imprisoned for the vicious 1969 slaying of a 4-year-old Albemarle County boy.

Sherman Brown, now 69, was 22 years old when he was convicted and sentenced to death in large part on his identification by the boy’s mother — who was beaten, stabbed and apparently raped in the same attack — and by allegedly flawed hair and fiber evidence.

Now an inmate at the Green Rock Correctional Center near Chatham, Brown was one of 12 men on Virginia’s death row in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment as cruel and unusual. The justices allowed executions to resume in 1976, but by then, Brown had been resentenced to life in prison.

Because the Richmond Times-Dispatch does not publish the identity of sexual assault victims, the mother and slain son are not identified in this story.

In a writ of actual innocence filed with the Virginia Supreme Court, Brown argues, “Recent DNA testing demonstrates by clear and convincing evidence what I have maintained for over 45 years: that I am innocent of this crime.”

A partial male DNA profile from the mother’s vaginal swab is not Brown’s, and with more than 98 percent certainty, it also is not from the now-deceased husband of the woman. Brown argues that it “came from an unidentified third man and constitutes powerful evidence of my innocence.”

richmond.com