Innocent Man Freed by DNA in Connecticut

I wonder how many more it will take before everyone realizes the system is flawed.

“You can take the handcuffs off,” Judge Richard Damiani said. And with that, a man who has been in jail for 21 years — and was supposed to spend decades more behind bars — walked away a free man.

DNA set him free.

The dramatic release took place Wednesday morning in Connecticut Superior Court on Church Street.

Kenneth Ireland went to jail in 1988, at the age of 20, convicted of raping and killing a woman named Barbara Pelkey of Wallingford. The sentence: 50 years.

His case was taken up by the Connecticut Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence from crimes to prove that people have been wrongfully accused. They did that in this case to buttress Ireland’s longstanding claim that someone else, not he, committed Pelkey’s rape and murder. The Project petitioned for a new trial, and the petition was granted.

Read More: New Haven Independent: DNA Frees Accused Killer, Rapist After 21 Years

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