National Registry of Exonerations Charts Exoneration Movement

摘要

In 1989, David Vasquez was released from prison after his 1985 murder conviction was overturned. What was of profound consequence was the basis of Vas-quez's exoneration: He was the first person in the U.S. to be freed on the basis of DNA evidence. This was not the first use of DNA evidence in a U.S. court, which had occurred 2 years earlier when Tommy Lee Andrews was identified as the assailant in a rape case. It also wasn't the first judicial use of DNA evidence, which had been previously used in English courts (the technique was actually developed by English scientist Alec Jeffreys in the mid-1980s).