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Clinic Clients
Larry Mayes spent 21 years in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City for a crime he didn’t commit. Today, thanks to the efforts of Professor Frances Watson Hardy and students in the Criminal Defense Clinic, Mayes is a free man. He was released December 21, 2001, as a result of the granting of a post-conviction petition students filed requesting DNA testing in the case. Without the DNA testing that exonerated him, Mayes’ 110-year sentence for rape and other crimes would have kept him locked up until he was at least 70 years old. Speaking of Hardy and the students, he says, “I call them my dream team.” On October 5, 1980, Mayes was accused of robbery and the rape of a woman working at a Hammond, Indiana service station. Hardy and the four students met with Mayes in the spring of 2001, and on October 12 of that year, the evidence was sent for DNA testing. After state police compared the test results with Mayes’ DNA profile, he was excluded as the source. Hardy called him to let him know that he would be out of prison before the holidays. “When I heard her hollering on the phone, I knew I was going home,” says Mayes. Of his Criminal Defense Clinic dream team, he says, “They all believed in me—they said they would help me, and they saved my life.”
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