Factual background: In the early morning of June 23, 1984, a woman and her boyfriend were sleeping in their car on a rural roadside when a man approached, pretending to be a police officer. He ordered the two out of the car, brandished a gun, and ordered the boyfriend to run into the woods. The assailant forced the woman into his truck, drove to a secluded area, and repeatedly raped her. The police compiled a composite sketch of the assailant from the victim and her boyfriend. A woman was later raped 100 miles away, near Edward Honaker's house. She said the assailant resembled Honaker, her neighbor. Honaker had an alibi and was never charged with this second rape. The detective on the second rape case, however, took a picture of Honaker and showed it to the first victim and her boyfriend.

A Nelson County jury took two hours to convict Edward Honaker of seven counts of sexual assault, sodomy, and rape. The Nelson County Court sentenced Honaker to three life sentences plus 34 years.

Prosecutor's evidence at trial: The prosecution based its case on several points:

· The victim and her boyfriend picked Honaker out of a photo lineup.

· The victim made an in-court identification of Honaker.

· The truck that Honaker drove was similar to the one driven by the assailant.

· Police found camouflage fatigues in Honaker's house, similar to those worn by the assailant.

· Honaker's alibi, which was corroborated by his brother, sister-in-law, owner of his trailer park, and mother's housemate, was called a "put-up job" by the prosecution.

· A State laboratory forensic specialist testified that hair found on the woman's shorts "was unlikely to match anyone" other than Honaker.

Postconviction challenges: Honaker made many written inquiries for any testing that could prove his innocence. Finally, Centurion Ministries (CM), a Princeton-based group that works to free the wrongfully imprisoned, agreed to work on Honaker's case. After CM discovered that some of the victim's and boyfriend's testimony was hypnotically induced, that the initial description given by the victim was inconsistent with Honaker's appearance, and that Honaker's 1976 vasectomy was barely mentioned in the trial (and not known by the prosecution's criminalist), the organization began working with the Innocence Project. Honaker's Innocence Project lawyers filed a motion with the State of Virginia to release evidence for DNA tests.

In the original trial, a forensics expert testified that sperm was present in the semen on the vaginal swab. The prosecution contended that the sperm was the boyfriend's, but they agreed to release the evidence to Honaker's lawyers. The Innocence Project, in turn, sent the evidence to Forensic Science Associates (FSA) for PCR testing.

The reason that FSA had to provide all the reports discussed below is that in June 1994 the victim claimed that she had a secret lover during the time of the original incident. This meant that DNA tests had to prove that one of the stains was not from Honaker or either boyfriend in order to establish Honaker's innocence.

DNA results: The first report from FSA, on January 13, 1994, showed DQ alpha typing of a vaginal swab from the rape kit, an oral swab from the victim, a semen stain from the victim's shorts, and a blood sample from Honaker.

This report indicated that there were two different seminal deposits (the one on the swab and the one from the shorts did not match). FSA requested blood samples from the victim and the boyfriend. The report stated, however, that even if Honaker were able to produce sperm, he was eliminated as the source of sperm from both deposits.

The second report from FSA was written on March 15, 1994; it included the boyfriend's typing, and verified the victim's DQ alpha. The boyfriend could not be eliminated as a potential source of the sperm on the shorts. Honaker and the boyfriend were both eliminated as the source of sperm on the vaginal swab.

The Virginia State laboratory tested the second boyfriend and could not exclude him as the sperm source on the vaginal swab. FSA then repeated the DQ alpha typing of all the evidence and typed five additional polymarker genes. Their report from September 26, 1994, state that these additional polymarker tests showed that neither the boyfriends nor Honaker could have accounted for the sperm from the vaginal swab.