THE WRONG GUY

Man Convicted of Rape on DNA Evidence Released After Victim Realizes He’s Her Ex

The victim didn’t realize the accused was her ex-boyfriend until she saw a photo of him from when he was 20 years younger.

A Michigan man convicted of rape on DNA evidence has been freed from prison after the victim belatedly realized she had dated him in high school. James Chad-Lewis Clay always maintained his innocence, but investigators working on the decades of backlogged test kits said DNA found inside the victim matched him, leading to the guilty verdict in 2017. When the victim testified, she didn’t recognize him and said she never had consensual sex with him. However, according to a report from Detroit Free Press, this year a private investigator showed her a picture of what Clay looked like when he was younger and she identified him as a young man she dated and had consensual sex with as a teen—around the time she was raped in 1997. Clay was convicted and sentenced to 25-50 years in prison in 2017, but has now been freed. His case go back to Wayne County Circuit Court for a hearing and decision on whether he’ll get a new trial, the Free Press reported. “It took for the media to get involved to get this case resolved,” he said. “If it wasn’t for the media, I would’ve still been in prison.”