In 2014, the victim would tell an investigator about the lineup, “But I can’t think of anything that overly stands out that made me select him . . . there wasn’t nothing, you know, that screamed, hey, it’s me . . . I kept thinking, what if I choose the wrong one?”
At trial, police acknowledged that the only suspect in the lineup without gold foil on their tooth was Lott. In addition, although the victim testified her perpetrator was clean-shaven at the time of the rape, at the time of the lineup, Lott had at least “a few days’ growth of moustache.” Lott presented an alibi defense at trial, noting that the day before the rape he had been with his fiancée at court on a bond hearing and then home all night.
Related: Eyewitness Misidentification
DNA testing performed in 2014 on the victim’s rape kit revealed a mixture of two males on a vaginal swab. The victim’s ex-husband—with whom she was still sexually intimate—could not be excluded. Lott, however, was excluded as the source of male genetic material found on the victim’s vaginal swab.
Despite this powerful new scientific evidence revealing Lott’s innocence, current District Attorney Paul Smith has refused to grant post-conviction relief to Lott. Smith also objected to testimony from an eyewitness identification expert about the frailty of the victim’s identification.
Having been wrongly convicted once and deeply concerned that it could happen a second time given the prosecutor’s posture in the case, today Lott agreed to a sentence modification in the form of time served. He regained his freedom today for the first time in 30 years.
“The Innocence Project is thrilled that Mr. Lott is now free,” said Attorney Thompson. “We will continue to stand with and by him and his loving family as he bravely re-enters a new world.”
https://www.innocenceproject.org/innocence-project-client-perry-lott-released-from-prison/
Same county where John Grisham’s The Innocent Man takes place.