The Nation - News from May 9, 1985

A judge ordered a new trial in Pittsburgh for a man who has served almost three years in prison for statutory rape because the alleged victim now says she lied about the incident. Judge Thomas Gladden ordered the new trial, saying the woman’s new testimony indicated she had not been pressured to change her story. William Davis, 39, of Fallowfield, has served 33 months of a 3 1/2-to-10-year sentence. But on April 23, the alleged victim, Ronnda Baker, 18, testified that she was angry at Davis, because he had allegedly beaten her mother, and had concocted a story that Davis, her mother’s common-law husband at the time, had forced her to have sex with him when she was 14.