In the early morning hours of March 9, 1983, a woman in her 20’s was raped and sodomized in her home in the Clayton County section of College Park, Georgia. Her attacker choked her from behind with a belt and, after raping her, led her around her apartment. He stole around $30 and left.
The victim described her attacker as a Black man with a soft-spoken voice who sounded as if he were educated.
College Park is a suburb of Atlanta. Part of the city is in Clayton County, and part is in Fulton County.
Two nights earlier, another woman in the Fulton County section, had been raped in a similar manner.
Detectives focused on 25-year-old Calvin Johnson Jr. as a suspect, believing these two rapes resembled a rape that Johnson had been charged with in 1981. At the time, Johnson pled guilty to burglary and the rape charge was dismissed.
The Clayton County victim identified Johnson in a photographic array but later failed to identify him in a live lineup. The Fulton County victim failed to identify Johnson in a photographic lineup, but did identify him in a live lineup.
On March 14, 1983, Johnson was arrested and charged with rape, aggravated sodomy, and burglary in both cases. Both victims identified him at a preliminary hearing. The prosecution presented evidence that an army camouflage jacket and a green sweater with light stripes on the sleeves had been recovered from Johnson’s home and claimed that both were consistent with the victims’ descriptions of the attacker.
In November 1983, Johnson went to trial in Clayton County Superior Court for the March 9, 1983 attack. The victim identified him as her attacker. The victim in the Fulton County rape case was allowed to testify. After identifying Johnson as her attacker, she left the witness stand and on her way through the court lunged at Johnson, saying, “You stupid bastard!”
A crime lab analyst testified that 36 percent of the male population could be excluded as potential contributors of the semen found on the vaginal swab collected from the victim after the crime. Because serology testing showed that the victim and the perpetrator shared the same blood group markers, no potential semen donor could be excluded because the victim’s blood type could have masked the perpetrator’s blood type.
The defense presented evidence that a pubic hair found in the rape kit had been compared to Johnson’s pubic hair, and that he had been excluded. The prosecution suggested that the hair had come from a public toilet or a laundromat where the victim took her clothes.
Four witnesses, including Johnson’s employer, testified for the defense that Johnson was elsewhere at the time of the crime.
On Nov. 7, 1983, an all-white jury took 45 minutes to convict Johnson of all the charges. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In September 1984, Johnson went to trial in Fulton County Superior Court for the earlier rape. Although the victim identified him and the victim in the Clayton County case also identified him as the rapist in her case, a jury acquitted him.
Johnson’s conviction in the Clayton County case was affirmed in 1989.
On April 26, 1994, Johnson, after his case had been taken on by the Innocence Project, filed an Extraordinary Motion for a New Trial to have the rape kit submitted for DNA testing.
On November 11, 1997, LabCorp reported that it was unable to make a conclusion. The evidence was then sent to Forensic Science Associates, a California DNA laboratory. The lab conducted tests on the vaginal swab and cervical slides from the rape kit and issued a report concluding that Johnson was not the source of the sperm found on the vaginal slide.
On June 15, 1999, Judge Matthew O. Simmons vacated Johnson’s conviction and ordered a new trial. The prosecution then dismissed the case.
Johnson subsequently was awarded $500,000 in compensation by the state of Louisiana.
Johnson was among the inaugural board of directors for the Innocence Project. He also served on the board of the Georgia Innocence Project.
In September 2003, his book Exit To Freedom was published by the University of Georgia Press. Co-authored by Dr. Greg Hampikian, the book chronicled Johnson's wrongful arrest, conviction, imprisonment, and the events that led to his exoneration.
Johnson died in January 2023. He was 65 years old.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 02-16-2026
