Man convicted of raping 2 women in W.Va. in 1987
Published 12:43 pm Friday, April 1, 2011
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — A Kanawha County man was convicted Friday of kidnapping two women from a Huntington Mall parking lot and sexually assaulting them in 1987.
A Cabell County Circuit Court jury found Donald Good guilty of kidnapping and sexual assault after two and half hours of deliberations. Good was found not guilty of aggravated robbery, media outlets reported.
Forensics experts testified during the trial that Good’s DNA matches DNA that was collected at the time of the attacks. Fingerprint analysts testified his fingerprints match three lifted from one of the victim’s driver’s license.
Good pleaded guilty in 1996 to killing a St. Albans man in 1992. He is serving a life with mercy sentence for that conviction.
West Virginia law requires convicted felons to provide a DNA sample for entry into a national database called CODIS. Prosecutors have said DNA evidence from the 1987 attacks was submitted to the database in 2009.
Another man’s wrongful conviction for the crimes led to an investigation of the State Police crime lab.
Glen Dale Woodall spent five years in prison before he was exonerated by DNA tests that concluded he could not have been the rapist. Woodall was released in 1992 and filed a lawsuit against the state that was settled for $1 million.
Woodall’s case led to similar, DNA-based appeals and an investigation of the late Fred Zain, a State Police crime lab official. The investigation found that Zain exaggerated and even faked lab test findings in dozens of cases. At least five other men convicted with Zain’s help have been freed.