Gary E. Dotson[1] (born March 8, 1957) is an American man who was the first[2] person to be exonerated of a criminal conviction by DNA evidence.
He was not exonerated or pardoned at that time, but due to popular belief that he was a victim of a false rape accusation, Dotson went through a series of paroles and re-incarcerations until DNA evidence proved his innocence in 1988.
Gary E. Dotson was a high-school dropout who, at the time of his arrest, was living in Country Club Hills, a modest Chicago suburb, with his mother Barbara and his sisters Debbie, Gail and Laura.
[8] At the time, sixteen-year-old Cathleen Crowell Webb made up a rape allegation to explain to her foster parents her pregnancy concerns so she could obtain contraception[9] after having had consensual sex with her boyfriend the previous day.
[4][11] The hoax began the night of July 9, 1977, when a police officer happened upon her standing beside a road not far from the shopping mall in the Chicago suburb of Homewood, where she lived[10] and where she worked in a Long John Silver's seafood restaurant.
Crowell tearfully told the officer that, as she walked across the mall parking lot after work, a car with three young men in it ran towards her.
[12] The resulting public sympathy caused the original trial judge Richard L. Samuels to release Dotson on $100,000 bond pending a hearing one week later.
"Big Jim" Thompson, formerly a federal prosecutor, responded to the media attention by declaring that he personally would oversee three days of public hearings on Crowell Webb's recantation.
The prosecutors publicly vowed to oppose the petition but later joined the judge in dismissing the original conviction and dropping all charges at the August 14 hearing.
[15] In 1985 Crowell co-wrote a book about the incident called Forgive Me and gave Dotson more than $17,000 in proceeds from its sale, keeping nothing for herself except the taxes due on that payment.
[10] Dotson used the money to finance the start of his post-prison life, including a trip to Las Vegas to marry Dardanes.
By fall of 1989, Dotson was working part-time as a construction worker in Illinois and was hoping to register for college classes to become a counselor.
[15][17] After her death, her husband David told the press how she felt about recanting: Once she got saved [in 1981][10] and came to terms with what she had done to Gary's life, she made the decision to come forward.