The Manhattan District Attorney’s office announced Monday that they would be exonerating two men that were wrongfully imprisoned, for over a combined 37 years, for a rape they did not commit.
The D.A.’s office announced that they would vacate the convictions of Gregory Counts and Van Dyke Perry, who had been accused of kidnapping and raping a woman in 1991, according to NBC News. They were 19 and 21 years old, respectively, at the time.
According to the New York Post, the two men went to trial in 1992 and were convicted alongside a third man. years later, things took a turn when the Innocence Project reopened the case in 2017 and DNA testing results showed that the men were not connected to the crime.
In addition, the woman at the center of it all admitted in April that she had lied. Perry and Counts were convicted solely on her testimony. “She admitted she fabricated her account,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. said of the unnamed woman.
“There’s nothing that anybody in the system can do to make up for what you’ve been through,” Judge Mark Dwyer told Counts and Perry before dismissing and sealing their cases in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Perry was paroled in 2001, while Counts was released on parole in August of last year, as noted by The Post. “I did 27 years for something I didn’t do,” said Counts
As far as repercussions, the D.A. said the statute of limitations had run out for his office to pursue charges against the woman or her boyfriend — who also reportedly played a role in the accusations — for the false report.
