18 years
In 1984 Ulysses Rodriguez Charles was convicted of raping three female roommates in Brighton and spent eighteen years in prison. While serving time for crimes he did not commit, among the losses Charles suffered was the loss of his daughter to suicide. In May 2001 he was exonerated of those crimes after testing of the biological evidence showed that semen on the victim’s sheet and robe did not match Charles’s; his DNA was not found in the apartment. In addition, one of the victims had told police she believed the rapist was circumcised, a fact which would have ruled out Charles, but the prosecution withheld this from the defense. The judge ruled that the prosecutors acted improperly by withholding this information. His conviction was overturned and the Commonwealth declined to re-try the case. Ulysses Charles was represented by Julie Boyden and Steven Hrones.