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Virginia Supreme Court Denies Actual Innocence Petition Despite Modern DNA Testing
In re: Hargrove, Record No. 240316 (Va. Dec. 18, 2025)
In this opinion, the Court denies a petition for a writ of actual innocence, filed over three decades after a 1991 conviction for rape, sexual abuse, and abduction.
In 1990, 22-year-old Saphonia Woolridge was walking home when a teenage boy approached her, then attacked her by hitting her with a stick and dragging her across a football field into the woods. The attacker sexually assaulted her, including digital penetration and rape, over approximately 45 minutes in broad daylight. Woolridge immediately sought medical care, and a physical evidence recovery kit (PERK) was collected, including swabs and her underwear. Initial testing found no spermatozoa, seminal fluid, or foreign hairs linking anyone to the crime. Woolridge did not initially know her attacker but saw him twice after the assault—once five to six months later near her apartment, and again about a year later outside her fiancé’s apartment building, where police arrested him. He was identified as 16-year-old Corey Jermaine Hargrove.
At Hargrove’s 1991 jury trial, the prosecution’s case rested entirely on Woolridge’s eyewitness identification. She testified with certainty that Hargrove was her attacker, describing his distinctive “big poppy eyes” and stating she saw his face “every night” when she closed her eyes. Despite the absence of physical evidence linking Hargrove to the crime, the jury convicted him of rape, aggravated sexual battery, and abduction, and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Woolridge died in 1997.
Over three decades later, in 2023-2024, Hargrove obtained advanced DNA testing using modern techniques unavailable at his trial. The testing revealed no male DNA on vaginal and vulva swabs and found a “weak and incomplete” DNA mixture on Woolridge’s underwear from three contributors. Critically, Hargrove was excluded as a contributor to this mixture. Hargrove filed a petition for actual innocence, arguing that this DNA evidence, combined with concerns about Woolridge’s credibility (supported by her ex-husband’s declaration about her diabetes and memory issues), proved his innocence.
But the Supreme Court of Virginia rejected Hargrove’s petition, finding he failed to prove by a preponderance of evidence that no rational factfinder would convict him. The Court determined that the DNA evidence had minimal probative value for several reasons. First, there were significant chain of custody concerns, as the biological evidence had been stored across multiple facilities over 30+ years, including the appearance of a previously unidentified hair on swabs and the presence of DNA from three contributors (rather than just two) on the underwear, raising contamination concerns. Second, the Court found it unclear whether the DNA on the underwear even originated from the attack. Woolridge’s testimony suggested her attacker may have only indirectly touched the underwear by pulling it down through her pants, and the DNA could have been deposited before or after the assault by her father, fiancé, or medical personnel. Third, the “weak and incomplete” nature of the degraded DNA sample undermined its reliability, and critically, the crotch area of the underwear was never tested using the advanced techniques.
The Court rejected Hargrove’s non-biological evidence as speculative and collateral. The declaration from Woolridge’s ex-husband alleging she suffered from poorly managed diabetes and memory problems lacked any temporal connection to the time of the assault, her identification of Hargrove, or the trial. The couple did not even marry until after the trial. General scientific studies about diabetes affecting cognition and the unreliability of eyewitness testimony did not establish that Woolridge herself was actually impaired or misidentified her attacker. The Court also declined to reweigh Woolridge’s trial testimony or reconsider issues her defense counsel had already cross-examined her about, emphasizing that actual innocence petitions require new evidence, not merely alternative theories about evidence available at trial.
Ultimately, the Court concluded that even viewing all the evidence together—the limited DNA results, the collateral non-biological evidence, and the original trial record—Hargrove presented at most a “theoretical possibility” that a rational factfinder would acquit, which is insufficient under the statute. The Court emphasized that Woolridge’s eyewitness testimony remained compelling: she saw her attacker’s face in broad daylight for 45 minutes and never wavered in her identification. The lack of physical evidence was unremarkable because the jury had convicted Hargrove without any physical evidence in the first place, based solely on Woolridge’s testimony, which Virginia law recognizes as sufficient to support a rape conviction if not inherently incredible.