Other Convicted Innocents
Neil Miller
Year of Incident: 1989
Jurisdiction: Massachusetts
Charge: Rape, Robbery
Conviction: Agg. Rape, Agg. Robbery
Sentence: 26 - 45 years
Year of Conviction: 1990
Year of Exoneration: 2000
Sentence Served: 10 years
Real perpetrator found? Not yet
Compensation? Not yet
Neil Miller was convicted of aggravated rape while armed and breaking
and entering with intent to commit a felony on December 19, 1990, in
Boston, Massachusetts. He was sentenced to twenty-six to forty-five
years in prison.
A man brandishing a screwdriver forced his way into the victim's
apartment where he robbed and raped her vaginally and forced her to
perform oral sex. The victim picked Miller's photo out of a mug book
after he had been convicted of a non-sexual crime. Miller's conviction
rested almost entirely on the eyewitness testimony of the victim. His
defense at trial was mistaken identification. Miller claimed that he
had never seen the victim before or been in her apartment.
A scientist from the Boston Police Crime Laboratory testified at trial
that semen stains were found on the victim's bedding with B and H blood
group substances. A vaginal swab with semen contained H blood group
substances. Both the victim and Neil Miller are type O secretors, so
the testing did not eliminate him. PGM testing was done on the bed
sheet and no PGM was found. Neil Miller was PGM-1 and the victim was
PGM 2-1. No PGM testing was done on the swabs.
The Innocence Project opened Miller's case in 1998. The vaginal swabs
and smears from the initial evidence was located and sent to Forensic
Science Associates. FSA's test results definitively excluded Neil
Miller from being the source of spermatozoa found. Neil Miller, after
ten unjust years in prison, was exonerated and released in 2000.