On Wednesday, a 35-year-old Detroit man identified as Terance Calhoun was acquitted after spending 15 years in prison for a crime of rape and kidnapping he did not commit.
Terance Calhoun could have been released from prison days earlier, according to The Detroit News. However, his exoneration hearing was abruptly postponed last week after a Detroit police officer approached the judge to inform her that Calhoun had confessed to the crimes. The officer also handed over documents to the judge. The actions of the unidentified cop were widely condemned by Calhoun’s attorneys and law enforcement officials.
Calhoun was eventually freed five days later. Val Newman, deputy chief of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office and head of its Conviction Integrity Unit, said in a statement that “a slew of things went wrong that resulted in the wrongful conviction of an innocent man.”
Prosecutors came to the conclusion that Terance Calhoun was not guilty because no traces of his DNA were found at the crime scene. They were planning to request his release last Friday, but Wayne County Circuit Judge Kelly Ramsey postponed the hearing.
Calhoun was sentenced to prison in 2007 after being found guilty of raping and kidnapping a 13-year-old girl as well as attempting to kidnap a 15-year-old girl. Both alleged crimes were committed in October and September of 2006. Calhoun was identified as the perpetrator by the teenage victims in various lineups.
However, according to Newman, Terance Calhoun should not have been charged because DNA testing in 2007 cleared the 35-year-old. Calhoun also did not match the 13-year-old victim’s description of the suspect.
Terance Calhoun was also not informed that there were no traces of his DNA in the condom used to rape the youngest teen. According to Newman, the 15-year-old victim told investigators that the suspect who attacked her had braided hair and a jigsaw puzzle tattoo, but Calhoun has neither of them, according to The Detroit News. According to Newman, many details in the exonerated man’s case were “missed along the way.”
One of Calhoun’s attorneys, David Williams, also told the news outlet that a second DNA test done in 2019 confirmed the 2007 results. Though it was confirmed that Calhoun’s conviction was unrelated to the 2009 discovery of over 11,000 abandoned untested rape kits at a Detroit Police Department warehouse, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy stated that the discovery allowed officials to analyze evidence in his case.
“However, important Sexual Assault Kit Task Force protocols for reviewing criminal sexual conduct cases, implemented after the SAKs were discovered in 2009, allowed the CIU to consult with them to evaluate significant evidence in Mr. Calhoun’s case,” Worthy said. “This evidence disproved that he committed the two crimes. We are currently prosecuting the defendant who is alleged to be the perpetrator of criminal sexual conduct crimes.”
Worthy did not provide any information about the person suspected of assaulting the two girls. “A series of fortunate events and a lot of very hard work by quite a few people led to my decision to exonerate Mr. Terance Calhoun,” Worthy said. “The decision, in this case, was the culmination of years of long work on this and unrelated cases.”
