Warith Habib Abdal (a.k.a. Vincent H. Jenkins) Case Chronology
Compiled by Rob Warden
Copyright © 2006, Center on Wrongful Convictions
Bluhm Legal Clinic, Northwestern University School of Law
May 18, 1982 — Leslie A. Werner, a twenty-three-old white woman, is raped and robbed in a nature preserve in Erie County, New York. Werner says she was attacked by a lone black man, between five-eight and five-ten in height, with a space between his upper front teeth and a “tenor-type” voice.
September 30, 1982 — Vincent H. Jenkins, a forty-three-year-old black man who later changed his name to Warith Habib Abdal, is picked up for questioning by officers from the Buffalo Police Department’s Street Crime Unit. Jenkins is six-two, has no gap between his teeth, and has a deep voice. Werner nonetheless identifies him as her attacker in a one-man show-up.
October 6, 1982 — An Erie County grand jury indicts Jenkins for first-degree rape and sodomy and second-degree robbery
June 6, 1983 — Despite the discrepancies between Jenkins’s appearance and Werner’s initial description, and despite hair evidence strongly suggesting someone else committed the crime, an Erie County jury finds Jenkins guilty on all charges.
November 4, 1983 — Supreme Court Judge Frederick M. Marshall sentences Jenkins to three concurrent prison terms of twenty years to life.
July 25, 1989 — Marshall denies a motion by Jenkins’s appellate attorney, Eleanor Jackson Piel, for DNA testing of hair samples.
February 10, 1992 — Senior U.S. District Court Judge John T. Elfvin grants a federal writ of habeas corpus and orders the prosecution to surrender vaginal swabs and slides for DNA analysis.
1993 — DNA tests are is performed by Dr. David Bing, of CBR Laboratories in Boston, but the results are ambiguous, failing to exonerate Jenkins.
1998 — In hope of resolving the ambiguities, Piel and co-counsel Barry Scheck arrange for additional testing by Cellmark Diagnostics in Germantown, Maryland, but Federal Express loses the evidence is lost in transit between the Erie County Forensic Science Laboratory and Cellmark.
April 29, 1999 — DNA analysis by Edward T. Blake, of Forensic Science Associates in Richmond, California, excludes Abdal as the source of seminal material recovered from Werner.
August 31, 1999 — Senior U.S. District Court Judge John T. Elfvin orders Abdal released based on Blake’s results.
September 1, 1999 — Abdal is released from prison.
November 22, 1999 — Over the objection of the prosecution, Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. McCarthy, supervising judge for Western New York criminal courts, dismisses the indictment against Abdal.
January 2002 — A Court of Claims action brought by Addal is settled for $2 million ($323.62 for each of the 6,180 days he was incarcerated). September 19, 2005 — Abdal dies of cancer at age sixty-six.
