On November 8,1979, the owner of an antiques shop in Gretna was attacked by a Black man unknown to her. The shop was not yet open when the man appeared and the victim tried to interest him in items kept outside. The man, instead, grabbed her and put a gun to her head. She was dragged to the back of the store, struck on the head, and forced into the bathroom. He raped her twice, at gunpoint. They exited the bathroom so she could answer a phone call, still at gunpoint, then returned to the bathroom, where she was raped again. The assailant took her clothing with him when he fled.
Police arrived within minutes of being called. They collected a towel that the victim used after the rape, as well as several hairs from the floor of the bathroom. Only the victim and the assailant had been in the store that day. The victim gave police a description and reported that the perpetrator had ridden up to the store on an orange ten-speed. Police canvassed the neighborhood and located a Black male on an orange ten-speed. This man owned a gun and lived in Gretna. The victim viewed the man through the shop window and said that he was not the rapist. She viewed a photographic lineup that included this man’s photo a week later and, again, failed to identify him.
Over the next few months, police showed the victim hundreds of photos and she viewed at least five photo arrays. Malcolm Alexander’s photo was included in an array that she viewed over four months after the crime. The victim tentatively identified Mr. Alexander’s photo. Three days later, she picked Mr. Alexander from a live lineup with more certainty. She then identified Mr. Alexander at trial, which lasted one day.
Mr. Alexander’s attorney, later disbarred, waived opening statements and called no witnesses to testify on Mr. Alexander’s behalf. In November 1980, a jury convicted him of aggravated rape and he was sentenced to life.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana and the Innocence Project NY filed for post-conviction DNA testing in July 2015. The results of two rounds of DNA testing proved that the pubic hairs left by the assailant in the victim’s shop bathroom could not have come from Mr. Alexander. The perpetrator was the only possible source of the hair. The conviction was overturned in January 2018 and Mr. Alexander was freed after serving almost 38 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
