DNA tests point to Ohio man’s innocence

Robert Caulley has been in prison since 1997 for the murder of his parents – a crime he says he didn’t commit. He was the first to report the crime, calling police to tell them he found his parents bludgeoned to death in their Grove City, Ohio, home. But three years after the crime, police focused on Caulley as a suspect. Although he repeatedly asked for an attorney, he was interrogated for 12 hours, and allegedly made a statement admitting guilt. He says that statement was coerced and he is innocent.

Now new DNA test results in the case could prove that he’s right. DNA from an unknown person has been found on a gun found in the house, which also had blood from Caulley’s father on it. Caulley’s attorneys are seeking to run the new unknown profile in a federal database and also test it against two possible alternate suspects.

Caulley said watching another Columbus man freed in August (Robert McClendon) after DNA proved him innocent put his own “uphill battle” in perspective.

“It does give me hope, because you see things do change and get corrected,” Caulley, 43, said in an interview yesterday at the North Central Correctional Institution.

Read the full story here

. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/04/08)

Also in Ohio, authorities are planning to run in the database a DNA profile from a 1990 rape case in which Brian Piszczek was wrongfully convicted. Piszczek spent three years in prison before DNA testing proved his innocence, but it wasn’t until recently that a Columbus Dispatch investigation again sparked interest in checking the database for the real perpetrator in the case. In nearly 40 percent of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA, the evidence also leads to the identity of the real perpetrator.

Today marks the 14th anniversary of Piszczek’s exoneration. Read more about his case here

. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/05/08)

Read about dozens of other possible wrongful convictions in the Dispatch’s five-part series “

Test of Convictions

”.