Sometimes life is cruel and unfair like the one experienced by a man who spent 36 years in jail convicted for a rape he did not commit.  It was 1982 when a well to do housewife in Baton Rouge, La was alone at her home when a man knocked at her door and thinking it was the plumber she opened the latch to see who it was but he barged into the house and wielding a knife forced her upstairs where he raped her several times.  One of the victim's friends came in and the rapist panicked and ran out after stabbing the helpless woman twice.

The police showed the victim many suspects and after some confusion she identified that her attacker was Archie Williams aged 22 who had a history of burglary and also involved in two rape cases in 1979 but was not proven.  The jury found him guilty on just the identification but his fingerprints at the crime site did not match his.

Now that the technology has grown in leaps and bounds the fingerprints found in the crime scene were run on a national database and matched a serial rapist Stephen Forbes who died in prison in 1996 serving a 20 year sentence.  The now 58-year-old Archie Williams who was freed yesterday stated that he did not hold any grudge against the victim who wrongly identified him and instead wanted to enjoy his freedom and go to college.  However he regretted that his family had to suffer a bad name for a crime he did not commit.