Long Branch Man Cleared Of 1988 Rape By DNA Evidence: Prosecutor's Office, Freed Today

Dion Harrell walked out of court a free man today, a week after a recent DNA test proved he was not the the one who went to prison for the 1988 rape of a 17-year-old girl back in 1988.

ssconviction of a Long Branch man who spent four years in prison for the 1988 rape of a 17-year-old girl has been thrown out after a recent DNA test showed he did could not have been the assailant, Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni said.

Dion Harrell, now 49, was 22 when the victim identified him just days after the Sept. 18, 1988 sexual assault in a dark parking lot. The girl said he dragged her into the empty parking lot along Broadway, assaulted her and stole her purse as he fled the scene, police have said.

The girl went home and reported the incident to her mother who called Long Branch police. A sexual assault forensics examination was conducted at Monmouth Medical Center where evidentiary samples were collected as part of the process.

The results of a recent DNA test demonstrate Harrell has been excluded as a possible contributor of biological evidence obtained from the victim, Gramiccioni said.

“This is wonderful news for Mr. Harrell and his family, Gramicionni said. "Our goal as prosecutors is to see that justice is done. Mr. Harrell’s 1992 conviction was based upon the best evidence available at that time. Advancements in science have now provided evidence of Mr. Harrell’s innocence, and our duty to act is clear. Today, modern DNA technology has provided justice. We will be working collaboratively with Mr. Harrell’s attorneys at the Innocence Project in New York to take the necessary steps to vacate the 1992 conviction.”

A jury convicted Harrell in a 1992 trial before Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Theodore J. Labrecque. Harrell was found guilty of the sexual assault based on the teenage victim’s positive identification and blood type evidence that placed Harrell in the population that could have committed the rape.

Blood typing was the best technology available at that time. Harrell was sentenced to eight years in a New Jersey state prison, and records show he was released on parole in 1997, after serving just over 4 years in prison, Gramiccioni said.

DNA evidence was first used in the United States in 1987, when a Florida man was convicted of rape after DNA tests matched his blood sample with the semen traces recovered from a rape victim in Orange County, Florida. But it wasn’t until after 1992 that the New Jersey State Police Forensics Laboratory started testing and utilizing DNA evidence for criminal prosecutions in New Jersey. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) forensic database was created in 1994, six years after the incident.