Charles Dabbs

The Crime

At about 3:30 a.m., on Aug. 12, 1982, an 18-year-old woman was attacked from behind on her walk home, in Westchester County, New York. Her attacker dragged her into an alleyway between a warehouse and another building. At some point, she hit her head and lost consciousness.

When she came to, the woman saw three assailants holding her down. As she struggled to get free, one of the men slapped her, bringing his face within inches of hers. The man then raped her and all three fled.

The victim, who was six months pregnant, later suffered a miscarriage. After the attack, the woman was taken to Peekskill Community Hospital, where a rape kit was collected. The victim’s clothes were also preserved as evidence.

The Investigation

The victim identified the man who raped her as 27-year-old Charles Dabbs. She said she was sure it was Mr. Dabbs because he was a distant cousin of hers whom she had known casually for nearly nine years. She claimed to have seen Mr. Dabbs as recently as three to four months earlier.

On Sept. 13, 1982, Mr. Dabbs was arrested and charged with one count of first-degree rape.

The Trial

In April 1984, Mr. Dabbs went to trial in Westchester County Supreme Court. The victim identified him as her attacker. She testified that her attacker had been wearing a black baseball cap with a Playboy bunny embroidered on the brim, which resembled a hat she had seen Mr. Dabbs wear. She also stated that she had recognized Mr. Dabbs by his distinctive laugh and missing teeth. The two other attackers were never identified or arrested.

The prosecution also presented forensic results showing semen on the victim’s underwear and on a gauze pad and slides from the rape kit, but no determination was made as to its source. Analysis of a semen stain on the victim’s pants revealed the presence of blood antigens B and H.

Testimony indicated that, based on his blood type, Mr. Dabbs could have secreted the H antigen. However, because the sample was mixed, the antigen could have come from either the victim or the perpetrator. In fact, any blood type would have been consistent with the mixed sample — a point that was not made clear to the jury.

The prosecution argued that the presence of the B antigen — which Mr. Dabbs could not have secreted — could be explained by the victim wearing her mother’s pants, on which semen might have been deposited at an earlier time. The victim’s mother testified that she might have had sexual intercourse while wearing the pants prior to the date of the attack.

Mr. Dabbs testified and denied involvement in the crime. He told the jury that he had worn his hair braided into cornrows, a fact not mentioned by the victim. He also said he had all his teeth, contrary to the victim’s description of the attacker.

On April 10, 1984, the jury convicted Mr. Dabbs of rape. He was sentenced to 12.5 to 25 years in prison.

In 1988, the Appellate Division upheld Mr. Dabbs’s conviction and sentence.

The Exoneration

Following the trial, the physical evidence — which included cuttings from the victim’s underwear and pants, and the gauze pad from the rape kit — was frozen in storage at the Westchester County Department of Laboratories and Research. 

In 1990, Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey-based nonprofit organization that worked to overturn wrongful convictions, agreed to pay for DNA testing for Mr. Dabbs. In November 1991, the trial court granted a motion to submit the evidence for testing.

Tests conducted on the victim’s pants and the gauze pad were inconclusive due to insufficient testing material. However, DNA was successfully extracted from a cutting of the victim’s underwear. Mr. Dabbs was excluded as the source.

On July 31, 1991, the trial court granted a defense motion to vacate Mr. Dabbs’s conviction and he was released from prison. The prosecution dismissed the charge on Aug. 22, 1991.