Tyrone Hicks, 57, was cleared of all charges on Thursday after spending eight years in a New York prison for an attempted rape in 1998 that he did not commit. Hicks’ wrongful conviction was a consequence of eyewitness misidentification—no physical or forensic evidence linked him to the crime.
Hicks first contacted New York Law School’s Post-Conviction Innocence Clinic while he was in prison to investigate his case. In 2007, after Hicks was released from prison, the Post-Conviction Innocence Clinic discovered never-before-tested fingernail scrapings from the victim of the crime. The scrapings contained a partial profile of male DNA that did not belong to Hicks—proving that he was not the perpetrator of the crime. On May 15, Hicks was officially cleared of all charges by a Bronx Supreme Court judge.
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