Some wrongful conviction cases, even successful ones, end with lingering questions about the guilt of the accused. Not so with the case of Keith Allen Harward, a 60-year-old former U.S. Navy sailor who walked out of prison on Friday after more than three decades behind bars.
In 1982, Jesse Perron of Newport News, Virginia, was beaten to death in his own home, and Perron’s wife was brutally raped. Harward, whose ship was docked nearby at the time, was accused of the crimes and convicted of murder, rape, forcible sodomy and robbery—largely because of the testimony of forensic dentists who linked Harward’s teeth to bite marks left on Perron’s wife.
