ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610140057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH
SOURCE: LAURA LAFAY STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on October 15, 1996.
A SATURDAY HEADLINE ABOUT A VIRGINIA BEACH MAN WHO HOPES RECENT DNA
TESTS WILL FREE HIM FROM PRISON INCORRECTLY SAID HE WAS CONVICTED OF
MURDER.
EVEN THE PROSECUTOR who helped convict Troy Lynn Webb is pushing for his release. Gov. George Allen is reviewing the case.
A Virginia Beach man who has spent seven years in prison for rape and robbery could not have committed the crimes, according to DNA tests conducted last month by the state's Division of Forensic Science.
Troy Lynn Webb, 29, serving a 47-year sentence at the Keen Mountain Correctional Center in Oakwood, has petitioned Gov. George Allen for clemency based on the test results. Virginia Beach Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Humphreys, whose office prosecuted Webb in 1989, has joined in the request.
``I could hardly stand up and ask a jury to convict based on DNA evidence if I didn't also feel it could exonerate someone,'' Humphreys said in an interview this week.
Allen, who received the petition Sept. 20, is ``conducting an extensive review'' of Webb's case, according to his spokesman, Ken Stroupe.
``There is no time line,'' Stroupe said. ``The review will take as long as is necessary to thoroughly examine all the facts as they have been presented. At such time when the governor feels he has had adequate time to conduct a thorough review, he will make a decision. There's an obligation to make sure justice is served, but also an obligation to the citizens to ensure their safety.''
In 1994, Allen spent more than four months reviewing a clemency petition on behalf of Edward Honaker, a Nelson County man exonerated of rape by DNA evidence, before freeing Honaker.
In the Webb case, the jury convicted on the basis of serology tests - the most sophisticated tests available at the time - indicating that analysis of a semen stain from the victim's underwear did not rule Webb out.
``At the time of the Troy Webb case, we were performing conventional serological testing. Due to the limitations of that technology, we could not eliminate Webb as a possible contributor. It amounted only to circumstantial evidence,'' said Dr. Paul B. Ferrara, director of the state's Division of Forensic Science.
In addition to the serology evidence, the victim in the case - who is white - identified Webb as her attacker in separate photo lineups of black suspects presented to her by detectives and in court.
``Just as we know that mistaken eyewitness identification is a major cause of convicting the innocent, cross-racial identification occurs with particular frequency,'' Webb's attorney, Barry Scheck, wrote in his petition to Allen.
Scheck heads the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York. The organization works through DNA testing to free people who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes.
Humphreys, whose office informed the victim of the new test results, said her response was ``Something along the lines of, `Well, if it wasn't him, it was someone who looked just like him.'''
Webb's face appeared in police photo lineups, Humphreys said, because of a previous conviction for the 1985 gang rape of a 14-year-old girl. In that case, court records show, Webb, then 17, was one of five young men who attacked the girl at Webb's home.
According to notes taken at Webb's gang-rape trial by Circuit Judge Edward Hanson, Jr., Webb was present during the incident but ``did not rape the girl - [did] not touch her at all.'' Hanson sentenced Webb to five years and suspended the sentence on the condition that he spend nine months in jail and undergo supervised probation.
Webb was still on probation at the time of his arrest for the 1988 crime. The victim, a 25-year-old waitress, testified that she was attacked in the parking lot of her apartment complex when she returned from work about 3 a.m. on Jan. 24, 1988.
She described her attacker to police as a short black man, 19 to 22 years old, with a slender build. A few days after the rape, she said, she saw a ``black guy'' where she worked and asked her boss to call the police because something about him ``bothered'' her.
``I was still upset to where any black man I seen I was going to think it was him,'' she testified.
The victim picked Webb's photo out of a photo lineup 17 days after the rape. The next day, she picked him out again. Almost a year later, she pointed to him in court.
Webb's court-appointed lawyer, Public Defender Peter Legler, presented no evidence in his defense.
A juror contacted Friday said she was ``very surprised'' to hear of Webb's exoneration.
``The strange thing about that trial was that the defense presented no evidence,'' said the juror, who asked not to be identified. ``It made me think he was guilty, that he just couldn't present a case for himself. That is how most of the jurors felt.''
Webb appealed his case to the state Court of Appeals and the Virginia Supreme Court. After both courts turned him down, his family contacted the Innocence Project.
This summer, project lawyers called Pamela Albert, who prosecuted Webb, and asked her to arrange for new DNA tests. Albert complied. On Sept. 7, a state forensic scientist issued a report, based on DNA testing that was unavailable at the time of Webb's trial, eliminating Webb as the rapist.
In an interview this week, Humphreys spoke philosophically of the justice system.
``I think there is a tendency on the part of the average person to view the system as infallible,'' he said. ``But nothing created by human beings is infallible.''
``It's not fun to discover you've convicted the wrong person. But I don't lose any sleep over it because, frankly, it's not our job to guarantee guilt or innocence. It's our job to present the evidence and see if we can find the truth.''
In addition to Honaker, DNA technology has exonerated two other Virginia prisoners, both from Arlington, since 1989.
Lynn Waltz of Landmark News Service contributed to this report.
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