Rawls claims to be an innocent man; group working to exonerate him

Man imprisoned since ’97 on robbery, kidnapping charges.

The Innocence Project is fighting for another Ohio man, David Rawls. Rawls is convicted of aggravated robbery and kidnapping charges and has been in prison since 1997.

“One of the big red flags is when a person is locked up for as long as David has been and still say they’re innocent,” said Donald Caster, an assistant professor of clinical law at the University of Cincinnati and an attorney for the Ohio Innocence Project. “For somebody like David, who has been in prison for almost a quarter of a century, that’s a pretty big deal.”

Since being incarcerated, Rawls has been denied parole at all of his hearings.

“David’s been in prison for a long time,” Caster said. “He was denied because he will not admit to the crime.” What happened?

In a Marc’s Discount Drug Store store in Euclid, on the afternoon of June 16, 1996, a man wearing a dark jacket and a black cap reading “police” on the front entered.

According to court documents, he knocked on the door to the money room and Sharon Wheeler, a store employee, opened the door. Once she opened the door, the man placed a gun in Wheeler’s face and shoved her into the room. He closed the door, covered her mouth and forced Wheeler to the floor. Using red T-shirts that were taken from the store, he bound her hands and feet.

Peter Thomas, the employee supervisor, knocked on the door and the assailant opened the door, pointing his gun at Thomas. The man pulled the supervisor inside and ordered Thomas to fill a plastic bag with cash.

After filling the bag, Thomas was also forced to the floor and bound with T-shirts. The man hit both employees in the head with his gun and both victims suffered severe head lacerations. The assailant took the bag of money, containing more than $8,000 and ran.

Once police were on scene, Thomas said the assailant was someone he was familiar with. In the days before the robbery, the man had been hanging around the store and said he was a new floor cleaner. According to interviews with other employees who spoke with the man, he carried a pistol with him and said he “was a part-time security guard and also ran the floors” and asked if there was “a money room around,” said court documents.

Joe Jones III, the store’s greeter, testified he saw the man run out of the store carrying a bag and red shirt. Jones said the perpetrator had spoken to him just before the robbery and asked which manager was working.

Detectives called the company that the Marc’s contracted to clean the floors and learned a man fitting the perpetrator’s description was employed there named David Rawls.

Police gathered a photo array of potential suspects, including Rawls, which were shown to Marc’s employees. All chose David Rawls as the person they saw.

Rawls was arrested in June 1996 on charges of aggravated robbery of a Marc’s. After his indictment, charges were amended to two counts of aggravated robbery and two counts of kidnapping. Each count carried a firearm specification and an aggravated felony specification for a previous conviction for aggravated robbery.

Rawls went to trial in January 1997 and was found guilty on all charges. He was sentenced to a total, indeterminate term of 15 to 50 years in prison, according to court documents.

Familiar territory

The Innocence Project works to exonerate those who are wrongly convicted by using DNA testing and criminal justice reform. The Ohio Innocence Project at Cincinnati Law began in 2003 and is now one of the top-performing groups of the Innocence Network.

Caster isn’t a stranger to exonerating inmates. In 2016, Caster worked with James Parsons, a Norwalk man, to overturn his conviction.

He was charged with the Feb. 12, 1981, murder of his 41-year-old wife, Barbara. Parsons was arrested in 1993 and spent 23 years in prison.

Caster argued the state failed to turn over the personnel file of G. Michelle Yezzo, of the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, and that Yezzo acted with “controversial behavior.”

The conviction was overturned in 2016, but Parsons died before a new trial was set.

Rawls fighting for his life

Caster said the case against Rawls is largely based on eyewitness identifications, which is “not terribly reliable.”

Rawls filed an application for post-conviction DNA testing in August 2015.

“We did a motion for DNA. Whoever committed the crime used a couple of T-shirts from the store to tie up an employee,” Caster said. “The police collected the shirts and they certainly would have the perpetrator’s DNA.”

Caster said they have litigated the testing of the T-shirts for years, but the state said they were unable to find them.

“Nobody could produce any evidence to if they had been destroyed or where they had gone,” Caster said.

The court ordered the Euclid Police Department to search its evidence room for the shirts. Caster said a couple of officers went through every box in the room and couldn’t find them.

“(The shirts) could have been a great source of evidence, but somewhere along the line the police got rid of it,” Caster said.

Despite eyewitness accounts, there is still no physical evidence that ties Rawls to the case.

Rawls has filed a motion to release any public records regarding fingerprint evidence in the June 1996 Marc’s robbery.

“At David’s trial, the police said there were no fingerprints collected ... (but) some evidence says that there was,” Caster said.

He said officers took the fingerprints of the employees in the money room.

“Usually you would take them for exclusion purposes, to compare them against the ones that you find, to eliminate the victim’s prints,” Caster said. “(That’s not commonly done) unless you have prints from a crime scene; we think it’s possible there were fingerprints collected.”

Rawls filed the public records motion in July and is still waiting for a ruling.

“We’re very frustrated,” Caster said. “We want to move the case along for him.”

Caster said he’s seen murderers who have been granted parole sooner than Rawls.

“He could go to the parole board and say ‘I did it and I’m sorry.’ The parole board will look more favorably if he admits to the crime,” Caster said.

“It takes someone very strong and serious about their principles to take a stand against the parole board and assert their innocence even if it could hurt their chances of being released.”

Rawls was sent to the Grafton Correctional Institution in February 1997. He could stay there until 2050.