'Exonerated' man must wait for trial

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Nearly a year after Maryland Innocence Project lawyers announced DNA evidence they said proved James Owens was not a murderer, the prisoner must wait even longer for a new trial.

On Tuesday, court officials said they misplaced James Owens’ old court file, pushing back his Aug. 21 arraignment until Sept. 4.

“He’s been frustrated for more than a year,” Owens’ attorney Stephen Mercer said. “He’s been frustrated for 20 years, because he was behind bars when he was innocent. I’m frustrated this matter has defied resolution in the face of the DNA evidence.”

Baltimore City judge Kaye Allison in June granted Owens a new trial after new DNA evidence cast doubt upon his 1988 murder conviction, but prosecutors are refusing to give up on the case because they believe he is the killer.

If Owens, 41, and his co-defendant James Thompson, 47, overturn their convictions, they could become the seventh and eighth men in Maryland history released from prison because of post-conviction DNA exonerations, according to the Maryland Public Defender’s Office.

At Owens’ Feb. 29, 1988, trial, Thompson confessed to burglarizing Colleen Williar’s home and watching as Owens beat, raped, stabbed and strangled the victim.

But defense attorneys announced in October that new DNA results, from semen and blood taken from the crime scene, exclude Thompson and Owens as the originators of the sperm found on Williar’s body and the bloodstain on Thompson’s pants came from a man — not Williar.

Thompson is awaiting a judge’s ruling on whether he will also have a new trial.

lbroadwater@baltimoreexaminer.com

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