On August 18, 1986, a white woman was approached and pushed into her car, which was parked at the train station in Mount Vernon, New York.
While the assailant drove, the victim was forced to remove her clothes and perform sexual acts with the man. When they arrived at Wilson’s Woods Park, the assailant threw her on the ground and raped her. He then left, taking her jewelry, handbag, and car.
The following day, the victim’s car was found a block away from the home of 20-year-old Terry Chalmers, who had a prior conviction in 1985 for first-degree sexual abuse. The police assembled a photographic lineup that included Chalmers’s photograph, but the victim was unable to identify anyone.
Forty-six days after the crime, the victim was shown another photographic lineup. Chalmers was the only person in this lineup who had been in the first lineup. The victim selected Chalmers as her attacker during this viewing.
On October 3, 1986, Chalmers was arrested on charges of first-degree rape, first-degree sodomy, third-degree robbery and grand larceny.
Chalmers went to trial in Westchester County Supreme Court in May 1987. The prosecution’s case rested almost solely on the victim’s identification of him in court.
On May 4, 1987, the jury convicted Chalmers of all charges. He was sentenced to 12 to 24 years in prison.
Chalmers appealed, arguing that the police did not properly conduct the photographic lineups and that the lineups were suggestive because a person can subconsciously convert the memory of seeing a person in the first lineup into a memory of that person being the perpetrator.
On July 18, 1990, the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court affirmed the conviction, ruling that even if the lineup was not properly conducted, the in-court identification was enough to convict Chalmers.
Chalmers subsequently discovered that the Westchester County Department of Laboratories and Research had retained the rape kit and items of clothing which were used as evidence at trial. With the help of the Innocence Project, he petitioned for DNA testing.
After the request was granted, Forensic Science Associates, a private DNA laboratory in California, performed PCR-based DNA testing on the vaginal and cervical swabs from the rape kit. A report dated July 8, 1994 said that the victim could not be the source of DNA in the sperm fraction from the swabs. A second report on July 26, 1994, said that Chalmers was excluded as the source of the spermatozoa from the vaginal and cervical swabs.
On January 31, 1995, Chalmers’s conviction was vacated and the charges were dismissed. Chalmers was released after spending seven and a half years in prison.
In 2000, Chalmers was awarded $875,000 in compensation from the New York Court of Claims.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 06-20-2019
