Miss. judge tosses out 31-year-old rape, murder convictions
HATTIESBURG — Two men imprisoned since 1979 for a rape and murder that DNA evidence now shows was committed by someone else are free men today.
Forrest County Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich this morning threw out the convictions of Phillip Bivens and Bobby Ray Dixon and ordered evidence be presented to a grand jury on Andrew Harris, whose DNA matches that of evidence from the crime scene. Harris already is serving a life sentence at the State Penitentiary in Parchman for another rape in Forrest County two years after Eva Gail Patterson was raped and murdered on March 4, 1979.
“Thank God, thank God,” Bivens said after Helfrich’s ruling.
Dixon, 53, who is out on medical release given inmates who have a terminal illness, said, “It feels good. It feels real good. I thank God. I feel blessed.”
Dixon has advanced lung cancer and a brain tumor and is undergoing chemotherapy.
The third man convicted of the crime, Larry Ruffin, died in prison in 2002.
Helfrich said he will take up the posthumous exoneration of Ruffin after the grand jury meets.
He appointed District Attorney Jon Mark Weathers as special prosecutor in this case. Weathers has been investigating Harris ever since he found out the DNA at the crime scene matched Harris.
The Innocence Project pushed for the DNA tests that ended up clearing Ruffin, Dixon and Bivens in Patterson’s rape and murder.
Ruffin’s case is the first time in Mississippi and the second time nationally that DNA has cleared an inmate posthumously, according to the Innocence Project. The first was last year in Texas when DNA tests cleared Tim Cole, who died in 1999, of the 1985 rape of a Texas Tech University student.
Dixon and Bivens had pleaded guilty and fingered Ruffin as the rapist after allegedly being beaten.
Of the 259 DNA exonerations since 1989, 63 have involved false confessions and 19 have involved false guilty pleas, according to statistics kept by the Innocence Project.
Phillip Bivens (left) is hugged by Teresa Strickland , the sister of Larry Ruffin, after Forrest County Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich ordered the release of Phillip Bivens and Bobby Ray Dixon, and said the two will be fully exonerated pending a presentation of DNA evidence to a grand jury. (Matt Bush/Hattiesburg American)
Dixon (George Clark/Hattiesburg American)