Essay On Larry Youngblood

Introduction There are many people who have been accused of crimes they have not committed. Youngblood and African American male. He was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault, kidnapping, and child molestation of the young Latino boy name David Leon. At the time of the crime Larry was 30 years old. And the incident happened in the state of Arizona, on October 29th, 1983. A ten-year-old boy was abducted from a carnival in Pima county, Arizona. The young boy was molested by an unknown suspect. Larry was taken to the hospital to collect the semen DNA samples, as well as the clothes he was in. He was sentenced ten and a half years. The year of his conviction as 1985.
Based on the little boy’s description, stating the assailant had a disfigured eye Larry Youngblood was convicted. (Youngblood 2012). The court based the case off of the eye witness instead of seeking evidence. He proceeded to claim his innocence, and did not take a plea. But the jury still convicted him of the crime. There was no type of tests taken during his trial. The police had improperly stored the evidence that could have proven that Larry was innocent. He as then sent to prison. Larry was in prison for about three years before being …show more content…
In Larry Youngblood’s case the DNA evidence did not help. The Supreme court believed that Mr. Youngblood did not need to be released just because evidence had been destroyed in the process. In 1988, the Supreme Court reversed a ruling by the Arizona Court of Appeals, which had overturned Mr. Youngblood 's conviction for the 1983 crime on the ground that his due process had been violated by the failure to safeguard evidence in the case. (Whitaker 2000). His DNA had been taken by Tuscan police so they could conduct tests in their crime lab. In the event of them testing results came back showing that Youngblood was innocent. He was innocent from the beginning to when him and his lawyers