DNA Clears Prisoner After 26 Years
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
MIAMI – A man who spent 26 years behind bars as Florida’s “Bird Road Rapist” was released from prison yesterday after DNA evidence cleared him in two of the attacks and cast doubt on whether he was responsible for any of the crimes.
“Victory,” 67-year-old Luis Diaz said as he walked out of a courthouse a free man.
Circuit Judge Cristina Pereya-Shuminer threw out his five rape convictions at the request of both Miami-Dade County’s chief prosecutor and lawyers for the Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that works to get inmates exonerated via DNA.
About 30 relatives and friends in the courtroom stood and applauded after the judge said he was free to go. A handcuffed Mr. Diaz, dressed in a red jail jumpsuit, waved to his family and wiped his eyes with tissues.
Prosecutors stopped short of declaring Mr. Diaz innocent in all the rapes, instead citing the difficulty of retrying him after a quarter-century.
Mr. Diaz, who is married with three children, was convicted in 1980 and sentenced to life in prison for seven of 25 sexual assaults that occurred between 1977 and 1979 in the Bird Road area of Coral Gables, south of downtown Miami.
The Bird Road Rapist would attack young women drivers, signaling them to pull over by flashing his headlights and then forcing them to have sex at gunpoint.
Mr. Diaz was arrested after a victim who worked as a gas station attendant spotted a driver she said looked like her attacker. The convictions were based on identifications made by eight victims in all, even though some of them initially described a much heavier and taller Hispanic who spoke English. Mr. Diaz, a Cuban-American, spoke little English and, because of his work as a fry cook, smelled of onions – something no victim mentioned.
In 1993, two victims recanted their identification of Mr. Diaz, and those two convictions were thrown out. But five other convictions remained, until lawyers asked for DNA testing.
Evidence gathered from the two of the rape victims was discovered, and DNA testing of the semen conclusively excluded Mr. Diaz as the attacker in both cases. That, in turn, cast doubt on his other convictions.
