Clyde Charles

The Crime

On March 12, 1981, at about 3 a.m., a 26-year-old white woman was walking along Grand Caillou Road, in Terrebonne Parish. A tire on her car had blown out on nearby railroad tracks, south of Houma, Louisiana.

As she walked, a Black man walked up to her and engaged her in conversation. She would later say that he had introduced himself as “Clyde.” He began making suggestive remarks, then threatened her, grabbed her by the neck, and dragged her from the road to the side of some storage tanks where he raped her. 

After the attack, the victim ran away and was eventually picked up by Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Harold Domangue. After taking the woman to the hospital, Deputy Domangue returned to the scene, recalling that about an hour earlier, he had encountered 26-year-old Clyde Charles, a local commercial fisherman, hitchhiking along Grand Caillou Road. 

Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Lieutenant Ronald Bergeron responded to Deputy Domangue’s request for assistance and searched the crime scene. He found a blue denim jacket 50 feet from the highway and the victim’s purse 30 feet from the highway. Behind storage tanks where the rape occurred, Lieutenant Bergeron found a red baseball cap.

At about 4:05 a.m., Lieutenant Bergeron spotted Mr. Charles hitchhiking on Grand Caillou Road, about one mile south of the location of the rape. Mr. Charles was advised of his Miranda rights and arrested. He was then taken to Terrebonne General Hospital, where the victim positively identified him in a one-on-one show-up. 

Mr. Charles was charged with aggravated rape.

The Trial

Mr. Charles went to trial in Terrebonne Parish District Court in June 1982. The victim identified him as her attacker in court.

Deputy Domangue testified that, at 2:25 a.m., he had noticed Mr. Charles hitchhiking on Grand Caillou Road near Gino’s Restaurant. Deputy Domangue had gotten out of his car and ordered Mr. Charles to stay by the side of the road, as he was creating a traffic hazard. At 3:20 a.m., Deputy Domangue spotted the victim’s car on the railroad tracks and continued on Grand Caillou Road where he found the victim.

Deputy Domangue had obtained a description of the rapist’s clothing by asking the victim to agree or disagree that her assailant was wearing certain items of clothing he described to her. Already suspecting that Mr. Charles might be the rapist, Deputy Domangue had included a description of Mr. Charles’ clothing in his questioning of the victim. The victim’s responses indicated that her attacker had been wearing a dark jogging suit with stripes.

According to Deputy Domangue, he had seen Mr. Charles before the attack, wearing a dark jogging jacket with white stripes, a red cap, and a blue jacket tied around his neck. The prosecution then presented the red baseball hat and blue jean jacket that Lieutenant Bergeron had discovered near the scene of the rape, as well as the police statement that had described Mr. Charles as wearing a blue jacket at the time of arrest. 

The prosecution also presented the rape kit. An analyst said that spermatozoa had been identified in the kit. A microscopic hair analyst testified that two Caucasian hairs on Mr. Charles’ shirt were microscopically “similar,” but not conclusively identical, to the victim’s head hair. Years later, hair analysis would be shown to be of little value, due to inadequate data on whether human hair could be compared based on microscopic analysis.

The defense argued that Deputy Domangue had fed the description of Mr. Charles to the victim, resulting in his arrest and her identification. 

On June 22, 1982, an all-white jury convicted Mr. Charles of aggravated rape. He was sentenced to life in prison at the Angola penitentiary. 

The Exoneration

Mr. Charles’ conviction was upheld by the First Circuit Louisiana Court of Appeals in June 1987.

Ultimately, Mr. Charles reached out to the Innocence Project for help. In 1999, Mr. Charles was granted post-conviction DNA testing of the biological evidence collected from the victim.

The testing was performed on one of two vaginal swabs. A large quantity of spermatozoa was recovered, as well as a few tissue cells. An analysis of the DNA profile from the spermatozoa of one slide was reviewed at the FBI Crime Laboratory. The FBI determined that a highly discriminating DNA profile had been obtained from the vaginal swab. This was confirmed by a report from Forensic Science Associates, a DNA testing laboratory in California.

Later, a blood reference was obtained from Mr. Charles and submitted for testing, which excluded him as the source of spermatozoa from the rape kit.

Based on these exculpatory findings, Mr. Charles’s conviction was vacated, the case was dismissed, and Mr. Charles was released on Dec. 17, 1999.

In April 2000, Mr. Charles’s brother, Marlo Charles, was arrested and charged with the crime. He was convicted on March 1, 2002, and sentenced to life in prison.

Clyde Charles was later awarded $480,000 in state compensation and settled a lawsuit for $200,000. On Jan. 7, 2009, Clyde Charles passed away at his Louisiana home. He was 55.

For an in-depth look at Clyde Charles’ case, check out The Case for Innocence | FRONTLINE.