Judge Urges DNA Exoneration in Mistaken Identity Case

James Curtis Giles, 53, spent 10 years of his life behind bars for a gang rape he long claimed he didn’t commit. This week, over a decade after his release from prison, a prosecutor recognized that Giles’ arrest was a case of mistaken identity, and a judge urges that he be cleared of his conviction.

If the appeals court involved in the case officially approves State District Judge Robert Francis’ recommendation, Giles will be the 13th felon in Dallas County to be exonerated with the help of DNA testing.

Mistaken Identity

Vanessa Potkin, Giles’ Innocence Project lawyer (a legal group advocating for the rights of those wrongly convicted of crimes), and the Dallas County District Attorney’s office told the court that they had obtained evidence proving Giles played no part in the 1982 gang rape of a Texan woman.

DNA testing proved that it was a case of mistaken identity.

One man who pleaded guilty to the rape, Stanley Bryant, gave law enforcement the names of two other men involved in the crime: James Giles and Michael Brown. Both Brown and Bryant were linked to the rape through DNA evidence.

James Curtis Giles—who lived 25 miles away from the crime scene and didn’t match the victim’s description of the attacker—was eventually arrested. But it was the wrong James Giles.

Police ignored another man with the same name—James Earl Giles—that lived in the same neighborhood as the victim. The victim has only recently acknowledged that she had some doubt when identifying James Curtis Giles as one of the rapists.

Giles is scheduled to go to the state Capitol in Austin to speak on behalf of reform bills to minimize wrongful convictions in Texas.

Currently, Texas leads the country with 27 DNA exonerations—Illinois has 26. According to the Innocence Project, there have been 198 exonerations in the U.S.

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