Men can't be charged in rapes despite DNA links

By STEVE THOMPSON / The Dallas Morning News
stevethompson@dallasnews.com

He raped a 12-year-old girl at knifepoint more than two decades ago. Now police say they know who he is.

But he won't be arrested. He won't face a judge or jury. He won't even need to apologize.

Dewayne Douglas Willis, 47, will complete his sentence for unrelated theft and burglary charges next month – and walk out of prison a free man.

Dallas police say he is one of six men recently linked to rape cases from the 1980s through DNA profiles or fingerprints. But authorities say it is impossible to prosecute them because of an old statute of limitations.

"He doesn't even get a slap on the wrist, and as far as I'm concerned, he should be in prison for the rest of his life," says the victim, now 36 and living in Frisco. "He took something from me that I will never, ever get back, and for that there is no justice."

It's an issue Dallas must face because, unlike most counties nationwide, it has preserved DNA evidence for decades. And though 19 prisoners have been exonerated as a result, that evidence is incriminating people as well.

Dallas police are taking a second look at hundreds of old rape cases in light of advancing technology. That leaves officials grappling with how to handle the newfound suspects.

If they can't be charged, Dallas police and District Attorney Craig Watkins would like to require them to register as sex offenders, and to have their deeds noted in their criminal histories.

"This is all new," Mr. Watkins says. "We're going into uncharted territory."

The Frisco woman, who is not being named because The Dallas Morning News does not typically identify victims of sexual assault, describes that night in October 1983 as a sort of murder – the murder of her childhood.

A stranger came through a cracked window about 2:30 a.m. He climbed the stairwell of her two-story home near University Park, where the girl lived with her mother and stepfather. She awoke and rose from bed.

"Take your shirt off," he said, holding a steak knife in one hand and a flashlight in the other. "Shut up. Don't scream, or I'll hurt you."

He forced her into bed, and when she tried to resist, he slapped her, once in the face and twice in the back of the head.

Afterward, he told her to give him all her money. She handed over $36.

He made her show him where the car keys were. Then he loaded a stereo and television into the family's blue Chevy.

He tied her hands behind her back with a purse strap and bound her feet with a lamp cord.

The sound of the car pulling out of the driveway woke her parents. She remembers her stepfather talking on the kitchen phone with police. She remembers her mother screaming to him: "He raped her! He raped her!"

She remembers waiting on a gurney in a hallway because Parkland Memorial Hospital was full. She remembers hurting so much that they couldn't immediately perform the rape exam.

This summer, the Frisco woman, now a mother of three, read an article in The Dallas Morning News describing the Sexual Assault Cold Case Program. In 2005, Dallas police Sgt. Pat Welsh had begun reopening old cases for which rape exams were preserved.

In a laboratory inside Dallas' Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, banks of freezers hold thousands of evidence samples dating as far back as 1981. While most jurisdictions have discarded such evidence, if they collected it at all, Dallas County has saved it.

The evidence has helped Sgt. Welsh solve dozens of cold cases.

The woman phoned the sergeant. He had the DNA from her decades-old rape exam checked against a database of DNA profiles collected from convicted felons. He got a match.

Soon, she was sitting at a table inside Dallas police headquarters. Sgt. Welsh showed her a file on Mr. Willis, a career burglar with a lengthy rap sheet that included punching a prison guard in the face.

This was the man who had raped her, the sergeant said. But because of the statute of limitations, there was nothing they could do.

The file charted Mr. Willis' life in and out of prison. He had been paroled in October 1983, days before the rape.

"Do you have a picture?" she finally asked. When she first saw his face, she was surprised. "There he was, just a guy," she says. "He looked kind of scared and sad and angry in the picture. But he's just a guy."

Mr. Willis, who is to be released Oct. 18, has not responded to an interview request. But he has talked with a prison official who approached him about the rape.

At first Mr. Willis said he didn't remember raping her, though he admitted he may have burglarized the house. But as the interview went on he began to cry, the official said, and he said he would like to apologize to her.

The Frisco woman says she would like to give him that opportunity. But she probably won't, because doing so would require her to give him her name for his visitors' list.

"In a strange way, I don't know if – so what if he's sorry," she says. "But it might help a little."

What she would like more is justice: He should have to pay for all the years she's spent feeling afraid, untrusting, dirty, different, not quite whole.

"Just because it happened 25 years ago doesn't make it any less important. It doesn't make him any less responsible for raping me," she says. "It doesn't mean he gets a pass just because he did it a long time ago – it shouldn't, anyway."

Unfortunately, the law says he will.

The statute of limitation on rape in Texas spanned only five years in the 1980s. Such laws protect the rights of defendants in situations where time has washed away evidence that could exonerate them. People die, memories fade, records disappear.

Because of the certainty brought by new technology, Texas' statute of limitations for rape was eliminated in 1996 for cases with suspect DNA. But the U.S. Constitution says those accused of crimes in the past can only be held accountable based on the laws in place at the time.

One legal expert says even listing them as sex offenders is a dangerous idea.

"Because if they could, it's left to the discretion of the prosecutors who they decide to label as a sex offender, even though the person hasn't been convicted of it," says Fred Moss, a law professor at Southern Methodist University and a former federal prosecutor. "That strikes me as being the worst possible solution. None of us are safe then."

But Mr. Watkins says DNA technology is a game-changer.

"We have advanced to the point to where we can identify a person that committed the crime out of one in 1 billion people," he says. "So pretty much we can identify a person and exclude the rest of this planet."

Mr. Watkins plans to present a package of ideas for lawmakers to consider next year.

Meanwhile, Sgt. Welsh will keep working old rape cases. He has reopened more than 100 from 1983. He plans to do the same with cases from 1984 and 1985.

“They want to know who their attacker was,” he says. “They’re looking over their shoulder even today.”

After her rape, the Frisco woman assumed police would catch the man.

“I just thought that they would, but they never did,” she says. “And then I felt forgotten about.”

For 25 years, she has wondered who ransacked her childhood, and she is grateful to Sgt. Welsh for finding him. But it has also left her frustrated.

“I think it’s horrible that our system allows him to walk free after he took away everything from me,” she says.

But if he ever again goes to court for a crime, she plans to be there to testify against him at his punishment.

“And maybe then my rape will count,” she says. “Maybe then it will matter to somebody what he did to me.”

Revisiting old cases

The Sexual Assault Cold Case Program focuses on Dallas sexual assault cases from 1970 to 1990 that were stranger-on-stranger attacks and that DNA could solve. Victims of sexual assault who would like their cases reopened can call police at 214-671-3584.

Other suspects

Joe Edward Andrews, 48, has been linked by DNA to the 1983 attack of an elderly woman raped at gunpoint in Pleasant Grove. He has spent time in Texas prisons on burglary and aggravated robbery charges but was released years ago.

Malcolm Earl Jordan, 63, has been linked through fingerprints to a 1984 attack in which police say he posed as an air-conditioning repairman before raping and robbing a 22-year-old woman in northeast Dallas. He also has a long rap sheet but is now free.

Carl Jessie, 44, has been linked through DNA evidence to a 1983 assault on a woman who was looking for her car outside the State Fair. She was dragged behind a nearby school and raped. He's in a Texas prison for cocaine trafficking but is to be released in 2010.

John Wayne Byan, 51, also known as John W. Mason, is serving life in a Louisiana prison on rape and burglary charges from 1986. He has been linked by fingerprint to a 1983 rape case in which a 29-year-old woke in her Old East Dallas apartment and found a naked man on top of her.

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