On April 26, 1981, a 37-year-old white woman was awakened in the bedroom of her condominium in Dallas, Texas, by a Black man holding a butcher knife from her kitchen. She grabbed for the knife and during a struggle, suffered a deep cut on her thumb and superficial cuts on both sides of her neck and on her back. When she stopped fighting, the man raped her, then fled.
The victim told police that she could not provide a description of the man because the attack occurred before sunrise and the room was barely lit. She said the man was Black, in his 20’s, with an average build. She was taken to Parkland Hospital, where her wounds were treated and a rape kit was taken.
On April 28, 1981, police came to her home and showed her a photographic lineup that included the photograph of 32-year-old Larry Fuller, a Vietnam veteran pursuing a career as an artist. His photograph was in the lineup because a woman had been sexually assaulted a few buildings away in January 1981. At the time, Fuller, who lived about a mile from the building, had been stopped by police because he resembled the description given by that victim. He had been released after the victim of the January attack said Fuller was not her attacker.
After looking at the photo lineup, the victim of the April 26 attack said that the photograph of Fuller “looks a lot like the guy.” She noticed a date on the photograph and realized it was an older photograph, so she asked to see a more recent photograph. The officer wrote a report saying the investigation should be “suspended” because the victim was “unsure of suspect at this time. This offense will be suspended pending further leads.”
On May 3, 1981, the victim called the officer and asked about the investigation. The officer responded by going to Fuller’s home where he took Polaroid photographs of Fuller, then went to the victim’s home with another photographic lineup. Fuller was the only person in this photographic lineup who had been in the initial lineup. The victim was upset because, while she believed she recognized Fuller’s face, he had a full beard in the new photograph. So, she put her finger over his facial hair and identified him as her attacker.
Later that day, Fuller was arrested and charged with aggravated rape.
On August 24, 1981, Fuller went to trial in Dallas County Criminal District Court.
The victim testified and identified him as her attacker. She said she was positive. “I just kept staring at his face, I think, and watching him just to be sure he wasn’t going to stab me. I think I kept staring at his face, just thinking that he would feel sympathetic towards me or feel sorry for me.”
She said that when he got off the bed, there was “a little light” coming from a window and there was the light from her clock radio. “It has a lighted dial and it threw light onto his face,” she told the jury. Asked about her failure to note that her attacker had any facial hair while Fuller had a beard, she said that he was “just looking at me face on,” so she could not tell if he had facial hair.
Benita Haywood, a forensic serologist at the Southwestern Institute for Forensic Sciences testified that she analyzed the swabs in the rape kit and detected acid phosphatase, an enzyme present in high concentration in seminal fluid. She also detected sperm. She said she found blood Type O.
Haywood that Fuller could not be excluded as a possible perpetrator because he was a non-secretor, meaning that his blood type could not be determined from bodily fluids other than blood. In fact, Fuller and the victim were both non-secretors, which meant that their blood types could not be identified.
The defense presented records from the National Weather Service showing that sunrise occurred at 6:46 a.m. on the day of the attack and that the sky ranged from foggy to hazy. Fuller’s girlfriend testified that on the night prior to the attack, she and Fuller had a barbeque and didn’t go to bed until about 1:30 a.m. She said that she felt their water bed move when Fuller got up around 6 a.m. She said she got between 6:30 and 7 a.m. and saw Fuller in the back yard, wearing his bathrobe and talking to a neighbor.
On August 25, 1981, the jury deliberated for 35 minutes before convicting Fuller of aggravated rape. At his sentencing hearing, Fuller testified. “I come here believing in the word of justice,” he said. “Justice with eyes, not justice that would be blind. I felt that I would receive a fair trial or I felt justice would be done. And I felt that me being innocent, it could be proven. I just felt beyond all shadows of any doubt I would be excluded from the matter.”
District Court Judge Marvin Blackburn Jr. sentenced Fuller to 50 years in prison.
In the mid-1990’s, Fuller wrote to the Innocence Project seeking help in obtaining DNA testing. In 1999, he was released from prison on parole.
In November 2000, after locating the biological evidence at the Southwestern Institute for Forensic Sciences, the Innocence Project requested that the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office agree to DNA testing. In 2001, the prosecution declined to agree, saying it would wait for the state legislature to pass a DNA testing statute.
On August 14, 2001, the Innocence Project filed a motion for testing under the statute, which had been passed on April 3, 2001. Over the opposition of the prosecution, Judge Lana McDaniel ordered the testing to be conducted by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).
Because only one slide remained from the rape kit and DPS said it was unable to perform the most sensitive DNA testing, the Innocence Project asked that the evidence be sent to a private laboratory for Y chromosome testing (Y-STR), or at a minimum some portion of the evidence be preserved for additional testing. Judge McDaniel ordered DPS to preserve half of the evidence for further testing.
DPS completed its testing in July 2003 and reported it was unable to obtain a male DNA profile. In April 2004, at the request of the Innocence Project, the remaining evidence was sent to Orchid Cellmark, a private laboratory for Y-STR testing. In 2006, Orchid Cellmark reported that it had obtained a male DNA profile from the evidence and that Fuller was excluded as the source.
On October 31, 2006, Innocence Project lawyers Barry Scheck and Vanessa Potkin filed a motion asking the court to find that Fuller would not have been convicted had the DNA test results been available at his trial. Judge McDaniel granted the motion. Assistant District Attorney John Rolater, who was not involved in Fuller’s trial, apologized to Fuller.
“Thank you,” Fuller said. “Apology accepted.”
Fuller, who had been returned to prison in 2005 for a parole violation, was released immediately. On January 11, 2007, Texas Governor Rick Perry granted Fuller a pardon based on innocence.
Fuller subsequently was awarded $1,752,000 in state compensation plus a monthly annuity of $11,500.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 02-03-2026
