Ky. Supreme Court Overturns Rape Conviction

**Dylan MacVillain** · 24th-August-2008

Ky. Supreme Court Overturns Rape Conviction
kypost.com - Covington,KY,USA

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - The Kentucky Supreme Court overturned a Lexington man's rape conviction on Thursday and ordered a new trial after DNA evidence raised questions about his guilt.

Justice Will T. Scott wrote in the unanimous ruling that the new evidence "is substantial if not pivotal" in the case of Lacy Bedingfield, who is serving a 25-year sentence in the 1995 rape of a 13-year-old girl...

...Bedingfield, 49, testified during his trial in 1996 that he didn't have sex with the girl and did not rape her. DNA evidence has since been introduced that, the Supreme Court said, "conclusively excludes him as the source of semen" found on the girl and her clothing...

...DNA testing has led to the reversal of two previous rape cases in Kentucky in recent years and about 194 others across the country.

Those exonerations also have sparked lawsuits, including one filed by William Thomas Gregory of Louisville, who served about seven years of a 70-year sentence on two counts of attempted rape before being released in 2000.

Gregory settled his civil case last year for $4.6 million.

**Percy** · 24th-August-2008

The police, whose job it is to discover the evidence; the DAs who assess and decide upon pursuing it; the lawyers who present and argue it; and the Judges who preside over the cases; all should be held to account for their errors.

It is a huge machine. A system. But People are it's parts.

The taxpayer pays for all these parties, the infrastructure and the cost of process.

The taxpayer pays so that these people get it right.

The taxpayer should NOT be paying compensation to unjustly treated, innocent accused.

The people in the system, the police, the lawyers, the DAs, the Judges, should be stripped of all their assets to pay for their mistakes. Those assets have been purchaced with the taxpayers' monies.

**Marx** · 24th-August-2008

Quote from Billy

A man accused falsely of two rapes was sentenced to 70 years. But women who murder their husbands in cold blood get a few weeks in jail.

Hows that for equality?

Oh.... you were serious...

Damn.