12-Year Legal Nightmare at an End : Recanted Testimony, High-Tech Help to Clear Gary Dotson

Gary Dotson, sentenced to prison for 25-50 years for a kidnaping and rape that never happened, had his conviction overturned Monday and his name cleared more than four years after his accuser, Cathleen Crowell Webb, said she lied about the 1977 attack.

Dotson’s extraordinary legal nightmare came to an end in a 20-minute court hearing.

“It’s been 12 long, long grueling years and I’m relieved it’s over,” said Dotson, 32, who spent six of those years in a maximum security Illinois prison and whose case became a cause celebre after Webb recanted her testimony.

The chief judge of the Cook County Criminal Court, Thomas R. Fitzgerald, ruled on Monday that Dotson was entitled to a new trial because Webb lied at the first one. But the Cook County state’s attorney’s office said it would not prosecute Dotson again because of questions about Webb’s credibility and because of new scientific evidence that favored Dotson.

Sophisticated Data

High-tech tests now show that semen stains on Webb’s undergarment could not have come from Dotson. “It’s my belief that had this evidence been available at the original trial, the outcome would have been different,” Fitzgerald said.

“This is as good as it will get,” Dotson’s lawyer, Thomas M. Breen, said after the hearing. “Gary is going to have to live with the horror of knowing he was incarcerated all those years for a crime that was never committed.

” . . . A rare, rare event has occurred in our judicial system,” Breen said, “An innocent man was convicted of a crime that never even occured.”

“The stigma remains,” said Dotson after the hearing. “It’s something I have to deal with. I’m refered to as a ‘convicted rapist.’ I’m no longer convicted.”

Webb, who is now married and a mother, lives in rural New Hampshire and has no telephone. Her minister, the Rev. Carl Nannini, told the Associated Press: “I’m sure she’s very relieved that it’s done.”

Monday’s victory was a special victory for Breen, one of Chicago’s top criminal attorneys who, without charge, took Dotson’s case because he believed the one-time high school dropout had been wrongly convicted.

And it was vindication for two journalists who championed Dotson’s cause. Former Chicago Lawyer editor Rob Warden and People magazine correspondent Civia Tamarkin worked since 1985 to keep Dotson’s case in the public’s eye while gathering evidence suggesting he was innocent.

“You did it,” Tamarkin said to Dotson after the hearing. “We did it,” Dotson answered.

Police Lineup

Dotson’s nightmare began in 1977 when Webb, then 16, picked him out of a police lineup as the man she said abducted her and raped her.

She repeated the story at Dotson’s 1979 jury trial. He was convicted and sentenced to prison despite tearfully pleading his innocence.

Then, in 1985, Webb, who become a member of a fundamentalist Baptist church and who said she was haunted by guilt, said she had made up the story to cover up for a sexual encounter with a boyfriend.

Instantly Dotson and Webb were a media odd couple, turning up on talk shows, morning news programs and magazine covers.

But the original trial judge refused to grant Dotson a new trial. Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson, who would soon stand for reelection, then held an extraordinary hearing as chairman of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

Thompson, a former state and federal prosecutor, conducted the days-long review of the case as if it were a new trial. Local television stations preempted the afternoon soap operas to broadcast testimony that included tearful appearances by both Webb and Dotson.

Thompson, who could have pardoned Dotson or granted executive clemency, instead said he did not believe Webb’s recantation, but would parole Dotson anyway.

Freedom was both joyful and difficult. Dotson quickly married a woman he met at the prison review hearing, became a father and had several brushes with the law, largely because he had a drinking problem. In 1987, Thompson revoked the parole and sent Dotson back to prison.

It was at this point that journalist Tamarkin, who had become convinced both of Dotson’s innocence and that he was a victim of the system, convinced Breen to enter the case.

The son of a lawyer and a former veteran prosecutor himself, Breen began a classic battle in the courts to win a new trial for Dotson even though Illinois law said the time period for a new trial had long since expired.

But Breen’s efforts were boosted by new DNA tests which, while not yet accepted in Illinois courts, have been accepted by courts in several states and foreign countries. Those tests by experts in England and California showed that the semen on Webb’s undergarment could not have been Dotson’s but could have belonged to the boy she claimed was her sexual partner.

Despite the new evidence and Webb’s admitted lies, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office balked at a new trial as recently as last month.

Dotson and his family celebrated Monday night at a private party thrown by Breen and Tamarkin.

Dotson earned a high school diploma in prison and is now enrolled in college and considering a counseling career. He is estranged from his wife and has just completed a year in a substance abuse halfway house.

“I feel more confident in myself,” he said Monday. “I don’t feel like I have somebody to answer to. For the first time in 12 years . . . I can answer to myself as a man and take responsibility for my life.”

And as for Webb, “I forgave her a long time ago. I’ve got no animosity.”