On Wednesday the Monmouth County Prosecutor has officially thrown out the conviction of rape against Dion Harrell. At 22 years old, in 1988, Dion Harrell was charged and convicted of rape against a teenager in Long Branch, NJ. Dion Harrell would spend four years in jail and 27 years of his life thereafter to prove his innocence.
While still in prison, Dion wrote to the Innocence Project asking for help in getting a DNA test that he hoped would clear his name. In 2014 the non-profit organization that focuses on clearing innocent people through DNA took the case and as of today, August 3rd, 2016 with the results of the DNA test, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s office has formally cleared him of the rape charge, officially foreclosing his legal tribulations but not his ordeal.
The conviction is now officially behind him but Dion Harrell is now trying to rebuild his life. As life-long residents of Long Branch ourselves, we know Dion Harrell personally. We’ve seen years of his name smeared across websites and unfortunately, the talk of the community. But every time you would see Dion, his words always were he was innocent.
Dion took whatever means necessary, even if it took 28 years, to finally prove what he’s already been saying. After news of his conviction being cleared went public, Dion Harrell said that he was relived, ready to start re-building his life, but he will never forget. Harrell told the New York Times that :
“It’s never going to leave me,”. “I’m scarred for life, no matter what.”
On September 13, 1998, Mr. Harrell was arrested in the rape of a 17-year-old girl as she was walking home from her job at a McDonald’s in Long Branch, N.J. Known as “Dobie” in the community, a guy who often played basketball with local police detectives, Mr. Harrell lived across the street from the fast-food restaurant. When he was arrested, the victim immediately identified him as her assailant.
“The cops were like, ‘Why’d you do it?’” Mr. Harrell said to the New York Times. “I was like, ‘Do what?’ They said, ‘Why’d you rape her?’ I just broke down crying. I still cry — it hurts.”
Mr. Harrell was found guilty in 1992, and from 1993 to 1997, he imprisoned at the Mid-State Correctional Facility at the Fort Dix Army base in New Jersey. When he was released, he was required under Megan’s Law to be added to the state’s sex-offender registry. The law, which was named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old girl who was raped and murdered near Trenton in 1994, excluded him from living near children. Though he wanted at first to move in with his sister, his sister had two sons, both of whom were minors at the time. So state agencies helped him find a hotel room, he said, where he lived for nearly a year. He had tough years ahead of him as no one would hire him.
Dion Harrell, GoFundMe
Mr. Harrell was experiencing what the author Michelle Alexander referred to in her book, “The New Jim Crow,” as “civic death,” said his lawyer to the New York Times, Vanessa Potkin, who works with the Innocence Project in Manhattan. He was unable to revive himself into society. For several years, he drifted in and out of homeless shelters and bounced from job to job: dishwasher, Sheetrocker, journeyman electrician.
“He served four years in prison,” Ms. Potkin said, “but was in essence sentenced to decades of instability.”
While in jail, Dion Harrell had wrote the Innocence but they had thousands of cases on backlog at the time.
It was also difficult, Ms. Potkin said to the NY times, to correspond with Mr. Harrell because of his transient living situation.
Eventually, in 2014, she took the case. She faced an immediate hurdle: Under New Jersey law at the time, only defendants still in prison were entitled to a DNA test. (The law has since been amended.)
But Ms. Potkin persuaded the Monmouth County prosecutor’s office to grant Mr. Harrell an exception. Last month, the test conducted on semen came back in his favor; and on July 22, Christopher J. Gramiccioni, the prosecutor, announced that he would move to have Mr. Harrell’s conviction thrown out, which would trigger the removal of his name from the sex-offender list.
Dion Harrell said these 20 or so years were a living nightmare for him and now looks forward to rebuilding his life. Harell is currently unemployed and living with a relative.
Harrell, alongside the Innocence Project, has started a campaign to help raise funds to help him on the road to rebuild his life.
Click here to help the beloved member of the Long Branch community. We are so happy for you Dobie and wish you many great memories ahead for you.
