Gideon's legacy: exonerating the innocent.

• Author: Pudlow, Jan

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During 35 years locked in prison for a child rape he did not commit, James Bain filed handwritten motions seeking DNA testing to confirm his innocence. Five times Bain labored over handwritten motions, insisting his arrest at age 19 for the 1974 Lake Wales kidnapping and rape was a mistake, and DNA could prove it.

Five times Florida circuit judges denied his motions. Bain, who had no prior criminal history until this legal debacle, kept waiting and waiting in his prison cell, praying for help.

The fifth time, an appeals court overturned the trial court's denial. When the Innocence Project of Florida, along with 10th Circuit Public Defender General Counsel Bob Young, stepped up to help Bain, finally he was granted the DNA testing.

This time, he had zealous members of The Florida Bar at his side, instead of fellow inmates giving him advice --what Bain called "chain-gang lawyers."

This time, Bain's plea of innocence did not fall on deaf ears, as just another amateurishly handwritten motion from yet another prisoner claiming he was railroaded.

In a refreshing spirit of cooperation, the state attorney agreed to DNA testing. The victim's underwear was sent to a private laboratory in Ohio. After more than three decades, high-tech science was able to confirm that someone else snatched the nine-year-old boy from his bedroom and raped him in a nearby field.

The suggestive way the police conducted the photo lineup with the boy. The unreliable serology science used at trial. The ignored alibi that Bain was home with his sister. Everything used to wrongfully convict Bain was wiped away when DNA testing excluded him as the rapist who left the semen.

In a joint order, on December 17, 2009, Bain was declared "actually innocent," and freed from his life sentence. With family members and his legal team smiling at his side, 54-year-old Bain walked joyously out of the Polk County Courthouse.

Pausing to use a cell phone for the first time, Bain's call on this newfangled gadget was to his mother in Tampa to tell her, yes, he was free at last, and he was coming home.

"Our exonerees all had counsel at trial. But the hallmark of all of our guys is that, post-conviction, they would try to reach out to anyone who could file anything in the courts to vindicate themselves," said Seth Miller, executive director of the Innocence Project of Florida in Tallahassee.

"The wisdom of Gideon bears that out in their experience. Only when they were helped with counsel through the Innocence Project or appointed a public defender did their cases begin to move. The system is not designed to avail relief when these exonerees were trying to proceed on...