Convictions In False 1991 Central Park Rape Case Vacated, DA Says

CENTRAL PARK, NY — A state judge approved a motion to vacate the convictions of two men who were found guilty of committing a 1991 rape in Central Park, the Manhattan District Attorney's office announced Monday.

VanDyke Perry and Gregory Counts — who were released from prison in 2001 and 2017 — will have their convictions for rape, sodomy, kidnapping and weapons possession dismissed after their accuser recanted her testimony last month as a result of a two-year investigation, prosecutors said.

On January 17, 1991, a woman flagged down police in Central Park and claimed that Perry, Counts and another man raped her at knifepoint, prosecutors said. The woman said that Perry and Counts demanded to know the whereabouts of the woman's boyfriend — who owed them money — while they sexually assaulted her, prosecutors said.

The two men were arrested and convicted on all counts brought against them in 1992, prosecutors said.

Lawyers from the Innocence Project and the Office of the Appellate Defender filed a motion in 2014 to re-test DNA evidence used in the original investigation and trial of Perry and Counts. The DNA matched to a previously unknown man who died in 2011 and who the accuser said she never knew, prosecutors said.

The results prompted the District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Program to re-investigate the case alongside the Innocence Project and the OAD, prosecutors said. Last month, the woman told investigators that her boyfriend pressured her to falsely accuse Perry and Counts of the rape.

"It is every prosecutor’s nightmare to convict an innocent person," District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., said in a statement. "This case is a tragedy for all involved – two New Yorkers were wrongfully deprived of their liberty during the prime of their lives for a crime they did not commit. This time can never be returned to them, but with today’s exoneration, we hope we can begin the process of unburdening them and giving them a chance at a brighter, successful future."

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