Towson Case in National Registry of Exonerations

You hear about it on TV all the time: a man is released from prison after years of serving time for a crime he did not commit.

But since the advent of DNA evidence, how many people have been set free?

According to a study by the University of Michigan Law School and Northwestern University, more than 2,000 people—including a man convicted in a Towson rape—have been released from prison after being wrongfully convicted. The schools built a registry of the cases.

Bernard Webster served about 20 years in prison after being convicted of rape in 1983. DNA evidence exonerated him in 2002.

The study that included Webster identified a number of ways that faulty convictions happen, The Los Angeles Times reports this week, including misleading forensic data, false confessions, police misconduct and unreliable witnesses.

As for Webster, one afternoon in July 1982, a woman came home to her Towson apartment and was attacked by a man in her bedroom. The man covered her head, threatened to shoot her and then raped her.

Witnesses described the culprit as a "young black man, 5-foot-8, wearing tan/beige pants, light skinned," according to an Innocence Project report.

Webster, then 18, was picked out of a lineup by the victim and two witnesses. Webster's attorneys presented witnesses who said he was at a basketball court when the rape happened, but prosecutors claimed that a blood type match was strong enough to prove Webster did it.

He was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to 30 years in prison, and it wasn't until 2000 that the Maryland Office of the Public Defender took up his case. In October 2002, after new DNA testing ruled out Webster as the culprit, he was released.

A 2003 Baltimore Sun piece recounts how Webster gained his freedom.