On August 26, 2002, Eddie Joe Lloyd was exonerated and released from prison. Several rounds of DNA testing proved that Lloyd is innocent of the murder for which he served over 17 years. The Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law, the Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, and the Detroit Police Department joined in filing a motion to vacate Lloyd's conviction. Lloyd was the 110th person in the United States to be exonerated by postconviction DNA testing.

Lloyd was convicted of a brutal 1984 murder of a sixteen-year-old girl in Detroit, Michigan. While in Herman Kiefer Hospital, Lloyd wrote to police with suggestions on how to solve various murders, including the murder for which he was convicted. Police officers visited and interrogated him several times in the hospital. During the course of these interrogations, police officers allowed Lloyd to believe that, by confessing and getting arrested, he would help them "smoke out" the real perpetrator. They fed him details that he could not have known, including the location of the body, the type of jeans the victim was wearing, a description of earrings the victim wore, and other details from the crime scene. Lloyd signed a written confession and gave a tape recorded statement as well. The jury deliberated for less than an hour before convicting him of first degree felony murder in May 1985.

At trial, the prosecution played the confession to the jury and claimed that Lloyd had killed the victim in order to get away with the rape. The forensic evidence consisted a semen stain on longjohns used as a ligature to strangle the victim and a bottle that was forced into the victim, and a piece of paper with a semen stain that was stuck to the bottle. The only testing presented at trial consisted of confirming the presence of semen and other biological matter.

Lloyd's attorney lamented in the press that his client would not permit an insanity defense, saying, "With a psychiatric plea, we might have had a chance. If he's not goofy, there's not a dog in Texas." Lloyd insisted that, despite his mental illness, he was innocent.

At the time of sentencing, Judge Leonard Townsend complained that the court's hands were tied since he could only sentence Lloyd to life imprisonment rather than what he believed was the "only justifiable sentence," which was "termination by extreme con[striction]" (i.e. hanging). With regard to Michigan's repeal of the death penalty, Townsend added, "And on account of this case, a lot of people who had reservations about capital punishment have been convinced that they should jump over the fence and sign petitions. The sentence the statute requires is inadequate. I cannot impose the sentence that the facts call for in this matter."

When asked if he had anything to say, Lloyd answered, "Into each life tears must fall. That means on both sides. MJ [the victim] had a right to live, as we all do…she said goodbye…and disappeared in the darkness never to be seen again alive. One day later she was found in a vacant garage. Cold, alone, and lifeless…Eddie Lloyd was focused on as a suspect while he was a mental patient and somewhere along the line was he was charged and convicted of the crime, a heinous crime, brutal. What I want to say to the court is that, to the family, MJ, to the city of Detroit, to everybody who was involved with the case, I did not kill MJ. I never killed anybody in my life and I wouldn't."

All of his appeals failed. Lloyd contacted the Innocence Project in 1995, seeking assistance in having the biological evidence subjected to DNA testing. For years, Project students searched for the evidence. Finally, a number of evidence items were found with assistance from the Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney's Office.

Testing was done by Forensic Science Associates on the green bottle that was found at the crime scene, which had been broken, as well as the piece of paper stuck to the bottle. FSA painstakingly reconstructed the bottle and obtained a profile from the spermatozoa on the mouth of the bottle as well as the spermatozoa found on the piece of paper. Those profiles matched each other and the one obtained from the spermatozoa on the longjohns. The Michigan State Crime Lab replicated FSA's work and got the same results. In addition, the state crime lab obtained a matching DNA profile from the anal slides containing semen that were taken from the autopsy. These slides had previously been reported lost.

Each profile from the items of evidence matched each other and excluded Eddie Joe Lloyd.

Eddie Joe Lloyd's exoneration cast a hard light on the investigation and trial that sent him to prison. It is obvious, for example, that the details provided in Lloyd's confession were fed to him by an investigating police officer. He had been allowed to believe that, by confessing, he would help the police expose the real perpetrator. The Innocence Project and Saul Green, former United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, are calling for a federal investigation of the police officers who investigated this case and elicited this false confession. This misconduct not only sent an innocent man to prison, it allowed a murderer to go free. In 15 of the 27 postconviction DNA exoneration cases where a false confession or admission led to conviction, the real perpetrator was subsequently apprehended. Many of these false confessions or admissions were coerced from mentally retarded or mentally ill defendants (see the cases of Jerry Frank Townsend, David Vasquez, Earl Washington, Ron Williamson). However, many individuals who were not mentally impaired were coerced, manipulated, or tricked into giving incriminating statements.

Simple reforms, like those suggested in Governor Ryan's Commission on Capital Punishment report (see Chapter 2, Police and Pretrial Investigation), would help insure that confessions are not elicited from innocent people. Two states currently have laws requiring interrogations to be taped: Alaska and Minnesota. These measures are common sense approaches to better police work and will help minimize the risk of false confessions.

This case illustrates the need for video taping or audio taping of custodial interrogations and exercising special caution when questioning those who are mentally retarded or mentally ill. It is a good law enforcement practice that not only protects the innocent but assists in the apprehension and conviction of the guilty.