DNA Tests Set Man Free After 19 Years

A man who spent 19 years behind bars for his girlfriend’s rape and murder was released Tuesday after being cleared by DNA testing.

“I’m out of here,” Bruce Dallas Goodman, 54, said with a smile as he walked out of Utah State Prison.

Goodman was convicted in the 1984 death of 21-year-old Sherry Ann Fales Williams, who was raped, sodomized, beaten to death and left bound off an interstate highway exit.

Testing last month on vaginal samples from the victim and a cigarette butt at the scene found DNA from two unidentified men -- neither of them Goodman.

A judge threw out Goodman’s conviction after prosecutor Von Christiansen said he had no plans to retry the case. The Utah attorney general’s office also called for the conviction to be thrown out. “I’m still uneasy,” Christiansen said. “I guess I made my decision because it seems the new DNA results create reasonable doubt.”

Goodman was sentenced to five years to life in prison after being convicted by a judge in a 1986 non-jury trial.

A rope used to tie Williams up was the same kind used at Goodman’s workplace, and a crude, early blood test matched Goodman’s blood type -- but also that of about a third of the population. Witnesses also had reported seeing Goodman arguing with Williams in a Nevada casino several hours before the murder.

Goodman and two defense witnesses said he was in California when Williams was attacked.

After insisting for years that he was innocent, Goodman accepted responsibility for the crime at a parole hearing in 2000, but said he did not remember it. His attorney, Josh Bowland, said Goodman was just trying to win favor with the parole board.