DNA Tests Give Idahoan Freedom After 17 Years on Death Row

A man who spent 17 years on death row in Idaho was released from prison Thursday after sophisticated DNA tests demonstrated conclusively that there was no forensic evidence linking him to the 1982 murder of a 9-year-old girl.

A state court judge issued an order freeing Charles I. Fain shortly after Canyon County Dist. Atty. David Young announced that his office had decided against retrying Fain in the slaying of Daralyn Johnson, who was abducted while walking to school in Nampa, a small town southwest of Boise.

Fain, 52, became the 94th prisoner exonerated as a result of DNA testing in the U.S. in the last decade, the 11th on death row.

Fain, who has always maintained that he is innocent, said “it will take a few days to get used to the idea” of being free. “It’s pretty overwhelming right now,” he said in a brief interview after being released from the state’s maximum security prison near Boise.

“I knew I was innocent,” Fain continued. “When I heard about DNA, I thought it might help me. DNA is my best friend right now.”

Fain said that his “faith in God” sustained him during his long incarceration.

“Something kept telling me it would work out in the long run. Technology had to catch up with the case,” he said, referring to the fact that DNA testing was not available when he was tried in 1983.

In fact, Fain is the second convicted rapist cleared as a result of mitochondrial DNA testing, which can extract DNA directly from the shaft of a hair and is dramatically altering the field of forensic hair analysis. First used in a Tennessee rape trial in 1996, mitochondrial testing also has been used to secure a number of convictions, but the FBI has no definitive statistics.

On July 6, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill vacated Fain’s conviction after being presented with the results of DNA tests done on three pubic hairs found on the young girl’s clothes.

At Fain’s trial, an FBI specialist testified that the hairs were similar to Fain’s after examining them under a microscope.

However, mitochondrial DNA tests conducted in June by a laboratory in Virginia excluded Fain as the source of the hair.

Fain’s lawyers, Frederick Hoopes of Idaho Falls and Spencer McIntyre of Seattle, moved to have his conviction set aside, and Idaho State Atty. Gen. Al Lance, whose office had been defending the conviction, did not contest the motion.

A week later, Winmill overturned the conviction and gave Canyon County prosecutors until Sept. 4 to either initiate retrial proceedings against Fain or release him.

On Thursday, Young said that “after conducting a thorough review of the evidence, we have concluded that while some evidence exists that Fain was involved in this crime, there is insufficient evidence at this time to prove Fain’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Recent DNA testing has proved that there was another person involved in this case, but there is no forensic evidence proving Fain’s involvement.”

McIntyre said the decision to release Fain made it clear that “his innocence has been established now and that is why he walked out as a free man.”

Young said later that his office was continuing to investigate the murder. He expressed regret that the Johnson family has “had to relive the brutal murder of their daughter and accept that her killer has not yet been apprehended.”

In recent weeks, Young’s office has been looking closely at other suspects, but he said nothing conclusive has been found.

Johnson was last seen alive leaving her house shortly after 8 a.m. on Feb. 24, 1982, for the four-block walk to school in Nampa. She never arrived. Three days later, her body was found by fishermen at a public fishing spot on the Snake River outside of town. Several hairs and fibers were recovered from her clothing. The police immediately began taking hair samples from a number of suspects but eliminated them from consideration after their hair was judged dissimilar, according to court records.

At the time, Fain was unemployed and living with his parents in Redmond, Ore., 360 miles away, according to his lawyers. Fain had been a garbage collector in Nampa before being laid off in June 1981.

Fain returned to Idaho in mid-March to look for work and eventually moved in with a woman who lived about a block from Johnson’s home. That September, police stopped Fain and asked him whether he would provide a sample of his light brown hair. Fain agreed and an FBI examiner said the sample shared characteristics with two hairs recovered from Johnson’s underwear and another from one of her socks.

The FBI agent was a key witness at the trial. Prosecutors also offered testimony from two jailhouse informants who said that Fain had confessed to the murder. Witnesses from Redmond testified, however, that Fain was in Oregon at the time of the killing.

A jury convicted Fain and a state court judge sentenced him to death. The conviction was upheld by the Idaho Supreme Court, over two dissents, including a blistering opinion from Justice Stephen Bistline. Bistline was particularly critical of the testimony from the jailhouse informants, one of whom originally said he had been threatened by prosecutors to testify against Fain. The inmate, Ricky Chilton, who was facing 230 years on various charges, eventually entered a plea agreement and was released after three years.

Fain then got new lawyers, Hoopes and McIntyre, who contend that several of his constitutional rights were violated during the trial. On Thursday, both attorneys said they were elated at the outcome and said they hoped that people in Idaho and across the country learned something from the case.

“When people in Idaho talk about the death penalty, they talk about it in terms of the heinous crime they know best . . . and they wonder why the monster who committed this crime hasn’t been executed,” Hoopes said. “No one favors executing the innocent, but if you’re going to execute your favorite monster, you have to have a legal framework, and the system is going to be run by fallible human beings. . . .

“If it hadn’t been for the marriage between jurisprudence and DNA, Charlie Fain may have been exhibit No. 1 in the error rate. This case demonstrates that those who presuppose that only the guilty get the death penalty are wrong.”