After nearly 20 years behind bars, Alvin F. Jardine III of Maui has been released thanks to a state judge ruling that newly examined DNA evidence raised doubts about his jury’s guilty verdict on rape charges. The reversal was obtained by Hawaii Innocence Project, which has directed donations and energy to screen convictions and challenge guilty verdicts not supported by DNA evidence.

Hawaii legislators have changed the state law in recent years to recognize modern conviction review, allowing any person sentenced for a crime to apply for post-conviction DNA testing at any time and retain evidence in any case resulting in a conviction until incarceration, parole and probation have been completed. The Legislature next should require compensation to people who succeed in overturning their wrongful convictions.

Jardine’s conviction in 1992 came after two trials ended in hung juries. He may not have been an appealing defendant; his defense was that he had been drinking more than two six-packs of beer and gone to bed about 11 p.m. on the night of the crime. The 25-year-old victim identified Jardine as the assailant who broke into her Haiku home, held a knife to her throat and raped her repeatedly for hours as her children slept in a nearby bedroom.

The Hawaii Innocence Project, directed by University of Hawaii law professor Virginia Hench, focused on a tablecloth covering a papasan bowl chair where the victim said her assailant had sat during and after the assault. The project sent the tablecloth to the prestigious and expensive Orchid Cellmark laboratory in Ohio, which excluded Jardine as the source of three of four samples taken from the fabric, the source of the fourth being inconclusive.

Maui Circuit Judge Joel August then overturned Jardine’s convictions and last week fellow Judge Joseph Cardoza dismissed all of the various charges of sexual assault, kidnapping, terroristic threatening and burglary. Jardine, who could have been released from prison a decade ago if he had admitted to the crime and enrolled in sex offender treatment, was finally a free man.

Post-conviction DNA exonerations total more than 270 in the United States since 1989, but Jardine is the first in Hawaii to win dismissal of convictions because of DNA test results. More than 200 of those winning overturned verdicts were minorities; Jardine is a Native Hawaiian, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs provided donations to his Innocence Project effort.

Across the country, prosecutors block challenges of past convictions. In the Jardine case, Maui Deputy Prosecutor Robert D. Rivera told the Star-Advertiser’s Rosemarie Bernardo that he filed the motion to dismiss the charges to avoid a fourth trial so the victim and her family would "not be traumatized 20 years later." However, Judge August ruled that the DNA information likely would have resulted in an outcome different than the last jury’s guilty verdict.

The Innocence Project now is reviewing about 20 guilty verdicts for possible intervention on behalf of convicts. We laud its goal of educating the public to resist assuming that a person is guilty unless proven innocent; remember, it’s the other way around.