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Legal Sentencing

He went to prison 35 years ago for sexual assault, DNA showed he didn’t do it

Joshua Bote
USA TODAY
Rafael Ruiz, 60, was only 25 when he was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman with two others in East Harlem in 1985. He spent the next 25 years in prison.

A New York man was fully exonerated Tuesday after being wrongfully convicted for a sexual assault that took place in 1984.

Rafael Ruiz, 60, was only 25 when he was found guilty in 1985 of sexually assaulting a woman with two others in East Harlem. He spent the next 25 years in prison – his maximum sentence, per the Innocence Project, the nonprofit that worked with him for 13 years to help vacate the conviction.

He was released on parole in 2009, but he continued to maintain his innocence – this time, with the aid of the Innocence Project and the Manhattan District Attorney's Conviction Integrity Program, which unsealed the victim's rape kit. The kit was tested and did not match Ruiz in any of the samples collected.

Further, according to the Innocence Project, Ruiz did not match the description of the attacker, an acquaintance of the woman's. She also called the attacker by the nickname "Ronnie," which Ruiz never used.

“I was a man who went to court and went to trial to prove his innocence, but I was treated like I was already guilty when I stepped in there,” Ruiz said in a statement from the Innocence Project.

The organization added that the victim mistakenly identified the apartment where her attackers came from, pointing out the apartment where Ruiz lived with his brother.

Years later, while Ruiz was convicted, a former assistant district attorney, William M. Tendy, Jr., found that "Ronnie" lived across the hall from Ruiz, per the Innocence Project. The man also had a history of violence against women, according to their neighbors.

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Although Ruiz was offered a guilty plea deal – which would have granted him a considerably shorter sentence of only one-and-a-half to 3 years in prison – he turned it down to take the case to trial.

The circumstances surrounding his case are sometimes referred to as a "trial penalty," which is when "defendants receive longer sentences at trial than they would have through a plea bargain, often substantially longer," according to University of Pennsylvania law professor David S. Abrams.

“I have my freedom and now I can go on with my life,” Ruiz, who now lives with his brother in the Bronx, said in a statement.

Follow Joshua Bote on Twitter: @joshua_bote

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