In June 1995, Toussaint Gumbs’ family reported the 16-year-old missing from his grandparents’ home on Richmond’s North Side. Earlier that month, just a few blocks away in an alley behind the 3500 block of Missouri Avenue, police discovered the body of a young man who had been shot to death. Nearby, they found shell casings, but no identification.

Debbie Smith, forced from her Williamsburg home in 1989 and raped in nearby woods, is not an anonymous victim. Her attacker, Norman D. Jimmerson, was caught in 1995 by Virginia’s fourth DNA “cold hit.“ Smith began speaking out publicly for victims and helped lead to congressional passage of the Debbie Smith Act of 2004. In 2006, she decided she needed to meet with Jimmerson, now serving life in prison, and he was willing.

Other exonerations and awards In the past 20 years, at least 14 people have been exonerated of serious crimes in Virginia—primarily by DNA testing—and most have been awarded compensation by the legislature. YearYear
NameconvictedclearedCrime Jurisdiction Compensation
David Vasquez19851989Murder, Rape Arlington Co.$117,000

Arguably no one imprisoned for a crime they did not commit can be fully indemnified, though legislators are expected to do what they can today for Arthur Lee Whitfield. In 2004 after 22 years behind bars, Whitfield was released by the parole board when DNA testing failed to turn up his genetic profile in evidence saved from two Norfolk rapes that occurred the night of Aug. 14, 1981. The testing implicated a man already in prison for other attacks.

The Virginia attorney general’s office has joined in a request for a “writ of actual innocence” for a man convicted in Richmond of a rape that DNA shows he did not commit. Testing of sperm taken from the scene of the Jan. 3, 1984, rape did not find Thomas E. Haynesworth’s genetic profile, but it identified that of Leon W. Davis—known as the “Black Ninja”—a serial rapist serving seven life terms for other attacks.

Miscommunication will require additional DNA testing in as many as 400 Virginia cases in a groundbreaking project aimed at clearing people wrongly convicted of crimes decades ago. The Virginia Forensic Science Board was told yesterday that retesting is necessary because the outside laboratory that performed the initial work did not use up, or “consume,“ all of each sample to get the best results possible.

A convict armed with state DNA test results has asked the Virginia Supreme Court to clear him of a 25-year-old rape now believed to have been committed by a notorious serial rapist. Testing of sperm taken from the scene of the Jan. 3, 1984, crime in Richmond failed to find Thomas E. Haynesworth’s genetic profile, but identified that of Leon W. Davis.

Enforcement of a Virginia law requiring DNA samples from people arrested for violent crimes reached a milestone earlier this year with its 500th “hit.“ A hit occurs when a DNA profile taken from a crime scene matches a profile of a known or unknown person in the Virginia Department of Forensic Science’s DNA databank, one of the oldest in the country.

In the 25 years since Thomas E. Haynesworth went behind bars as a 130-pound teenager, he has befriended two inmates who, like himself, were convicted rapists. Earlier this decade, DNA testing of evidence discovered in old state forensic laboratory files proved those friends, Marvin Anderson and Julius Ruffin, innocent and implicated the real assailants.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine yesterday pardoned two men whose rape convictions were brought into question by DNA testing in recent years. Kaine spokesman Gordon Hickey confirmed that the governor granted absolute pardons to Victor Anthony Burnette in a 1979 rape in Richmond and Arthur Lee Whitfield in two 1981 rapes in Norfolk. “I was so excited I started crying. . . . I got teared up,“ said Burnette, 56, of Richmond. “I still have a hard time thinking about it,“ he added. Burnette got the news from his lawyer, Murray J. Janus, yesterday morning.

Of all his acts as governor, the one that should earn Virginia Sen. Mark Warner the highest praise may be his order to commence DNA testing of evidence from old criminal cases. The program already has cleared several men.

One of the Richmond area’s most notorious rapists, Leon W. Davis, also known as the “Black Ninja,“ has been implicated in a 1984 rape for which another man was convicted. According to court records, Davis’ genetic profile was “consistent with” the DNA profile identified in semen from the scene of a Jan. 3, 1984, rape in Richmond. Thomas E. Haynesworth, a man Davis once described as a friend, was sent to prison for the crime.

Tracking the lineage of
Virginia’s deer population
Radford biology students are using DNA samples to find where deer originated Virginia’s suburbanites and farmers often complain about the number of deer in the road and in the crops, but nobody knows where all those deer came from. Radford University biology professor Bob Sheehy aims to find out.

Henrico re-examines’84 rape Move follows report that imprisoned man’s DNA was not found in Richmond case Henrico County authorities are searching for any records or evidence that may still exist in the 1984 rape prosecution there against Thomas E. Haynesworth. Recent testing did not find Haynesworth’s DNA profile in semen left at the scene of a Jan. 3, 1984, rape in Richmond for which he was convicted. But testing did identify the profile of an as-yet-unidentified offender whose genetic profile is in the state’s DNA databank.

Doubt has been raised about a conviction in a series of rapes and other attacks against women in Richmond and Henrico County a quarter-century ago. Recent testing in the Virginia Department of Forensic Science’s groundbreaking post-conviction DNA project failed to find the genetic profile of Thomas E. Haynesworth, 43, in semen preserved from a Jan. 3, 1984, rape in Richmond.