Eddie Lowery

 

In 1981, twenty-two-year-old Army soldier Eddie Lowery, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, became a suspect in the rape of a seventy-four-year-old woman. Detectives focused on him after learning he had been in a car accident on the same street where the assault occurred, around the same time.

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The officers questioned him for eleven hours across two days.  During those eleven hours, they yelled at him, got in his face, and physically intimidated him. They denied him food and water and refused his requests to speak with a lawyer or his company commander. They also falsely told him he had failed a polygraph test and used personal information about his family to pressure him.

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Exhausted and overwhelmed, Lowery eventually confessed, believing he could clear his name once the interrogation was over.​  Although Lowery almost immediately recanted, prosecutors used the confession at trial.  When Lowery's first trial ended in a mistrial, they tried him again, securing a conviction.  Lowery was sentenced to eleven years to life in prison. After serving nine years, he was paroled—but required to register as a sex offender.

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Lowery spent the next decade trying to clear his name. Finally, in 2002, DNA testing of evidence from the crime scene identified Daniel Brewer, a serial rapist, as the real perpetrator. In 2011, Brewer pleaded guilty to the rape for which Lowery had been wrongfully convicted.