Thanks in large part to eight Duke Law students involved in the Duke Innocence Project, Joseph Abbitt recently walked out of North Carolina's Forsyth County Detention Center after serving 14 years for a crime he didn't commit.
Duke Law students worked with the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence for three years on Abbitt's case; he had been convicted of raping two teenage sisters who identified him as their assailant in 1995. When DNA tests were finally performed, it was shown that Abbitt could not have committed the crimes in question.
According to the Duke Chronicle, Abbitt is the 242nd inmate in the country to be released based on DNA evidence, and only the seventh man in North Carolina.
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