'Every District Attorney’s Nightmare': Two Men Exonerated In 1991 Rape Claim

After 26 years, two men have been exonerated of a gang-rape that the alleged victim now admits never happened. 

The 1992 convictions of VanDyke Perry and Gregory Counts for rape, sodomy and kidnapping were vacated in New York court Monday. Prosecutors had joined attorneys for Perry and Counts on a motion asking a State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan to vacate the convictions because of new DNA evidence and the woman's revised story. 

"It is every prosecutor’s nightmare to convict an innocent person," Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. said in a statement. "This case is a tragedy for all involved — two New Yorkers were wrongfully deprived of their liberty during the prime of their lives for a crime they did not commit. This time can never be returned to them, but with today’s exoneration, we hope we can begin the process of unburdening them and giving them a chance at a brighter, successful future." 

Perry was 21 and Counts 19 at the time of their arrests in 1991. Perry was released in 2001 after 11 years in prison and Counts was released in August 2017 after 26 years. A third alleged attacker was never arrested. 

The alleged victim said she was forced into a vehicle at knifepoint near a subway station in Queens. She said Perry and Counts — whom she already knew and who dealt drugs with her boyfriend — raped her along with a third man multiple times in the car and in Central Park when she refused to tell them where her boyfriend was. 

According to The New York Times, she said they punched her so hard her eye swelled, but a doctor who examined found no physical evidence to support her claim and that there were no signs of sexual trauma. 

Semen was found in the woman's underwear, which she said she put back on after the rape, but DNA testing excluded both Perry and Counts as the source. After that result, the woman said she had unprotected sex with her boyfriend the night before and the morning of the attack. Prosecutors argued in court the semen in her underwear belonged to the boyfriend although his DNA was never tested. 

In addition, the car in which the woman said the rape occurred was never searched. 

The alleged victim's testimony was the extent of the prosecution's case against Perry and Counts. There was no physical evidence linking them to the crime.

Counts contacted the Innocence Project, which began to take a new look at this case. After new FBI testing linked the DNA to a man who died in 2011, the district attorney's Conviction Integrity Program and the Office of the Appellate Defender's Reinvestigation Project in 2017 joined the new investigation. 

Eventually, additional evidence and new interviews led the woman to admit that the rape "never happened." She recanted her testimony and said her boyfriend had pressured her to falsely accuse Perry and Counts, the district attorney's office said. 

The woman won't face charges because the statute of limitations has expired, the Associated Press reported. 

"This case paints a very dark picture of the criminal justice system in New York City, especially at that time and continuing today," Seema Saifee, a senior staff attorney with the Innocence Project, said in a statement. "Like so many other cases that have come to light in recent years, these young black men were aggressively prosecuted and given lengthy prison sentences with very little care for finding the truth."

Counts said he does not want to be overtaken by bitterness. "I didn't want to waste one more minute being angry when I could spend that minute being happy," he told the Innocence Project.