DNA evidence exonerates New York City man for 1985 sex assault
After spending a full 25-year sentence in prison for a crime he did not commit, a Bronx, New York, man was exonerated by the first prosecutorial conviction review unit on the East Coast.
Rafael Ruiz was convicted in 1985 for sexually assaulting a girl in East Harlem. Ruiz, then 25, was sentenced to 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison and was released on parole in 2009 after serving the entire stint.
Now, at the age of 60, Ruiz had his felony conviction wiped off his criminal record after newly tested DNA from the victim’s sex assault kit found by the Innocence Project and the Manhattan District Attorney Office’s Conviction Integrity Program excluded him from the case.
Gee. I wonder if he served the entire 25 years because he refused to take responsibility for his actions in his therapy group?
That’s a valid point.
I remember the so called court ordered “therapy” sessions. A group of 10-12 men being forced weekly to repeat their offenses over and over. After all the men in the group repeated their offenses, we then had to describe in detail what took place. The main problem with this type of “therapy” is that it isn’t very therapeutic. I see no benefits to the participants. No treatment plan in place to discover the cause of the problem or any reasonable attempt to insure these incidents aren’t gonna happen again.
All this type of nonsense therapy does is offer shame and guilt and a sort of public humiliation in the group. Now I’m no doctor, but for the life of me, I can’t see where healing and life changing results can come of this type of “therapy”.
It’s a loop hole to collect money and put them on fear with a leash that they can pull anytime and fill a bed in the county or state motel. It’s all numbers rates and money. Use sex fear and drama and 5 mins of Fame on news and boom. 5-0 etc say they clean up there city etc. Tactics to $$$ time and ratings!
THAT KIND OF SO CALLED THERAPY
keeps the offender locked in time allows then to re-live and relive the offense the shame of reliving the offense takes away all hopes of rehabilitation to a point of fk it if i have to keep reliving something i done I do it again but this time after reliving it i see my mistake in getting caught
Where are all the politicians rushing to pass new legislation to make sure this never happens again? Or does this not matter to them.
Good point.
The government is more interested in “protecting the integrity of the system” then in discovering the TRUTH. They insist on protecting the verdict of a jury or in some cases a plea bargain when, in some of these cases, said verdict or plea-bargain has been obtained under Erroneous or even false pretenses.
While it will not return the 25 years he lost for a crime he did not commit, he should get some satisfaction out of the multi-million dollar lawsuit I am positive will be filed for wrongful imprisonment.
The state should owe him big time. I would sue the crap out of them.
JoeM
Excellent point
This is good news. I hope he is paid well by the state for the years he gave them.
How do you give someone back their life after that long? And think of all the people who are really guilty and get off on lack of evidence or a loop hole.
I guess when we are the victim we trust that the justice system gets the right person.
When we are the accused, we pray we do not get the shaft.
Some times an innocent man goes to prison and a guilty man walks free. We all know from experience the authorities can use some shady or even made up evidence to up their conviction rates.