Three years after DNA tests strongly indicated he was wrongly convicted, Ron Jacobsen walked out of custody Monday for the first time in 30 years.
“I feel relieved,” the 60-year-old Jacobsen said in a telephone interview shortly after his release. “And when this finally gets all over and done with, I’ll be really relieved.”
Jacobsen isn’t out of the woods just yet. His 1990 conviction for raping a Newton County woman was overturned last year, but he still stands indicted for the crime. His release was secured this week when $55,000 was posted to satisfy a $500,000 bond set by Superior Court Judge Eugene Benton.
Interim District Attorney Randy McGinley, who won election Tuesday, recently told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he will conduct a thorough review of the case before deciding whether to retry Jacobsen.
Jacobsen was picked up at the Newton County jail by Atlanta lawyer Don Samuel, who represents Jacobsen with his law partner Amanda Clark Palmer, the Innocence Project and a New York law firm.
“We are delighted to get him out and thrilled by the incredible support of those who donated money for his bond,” Samuel said. “We are confident that when the district attorney looks over the case, this 30-year-long nightmare will finally come to an end for Ron.”
The bond money was raised on behalf of Jacobsen’s family by Mightycause, an online fundraising platform.
In the interview, Jacobsen strongly denied raping a convenience store clerk in the predawn hours of Jan. 6, 1990.
“If they read all the evidence and look at the whole case, they will see that somebody else did it, not me,” he said Monday.
Thirty years ago, Jacobsen was an auto mechanic living in Decatur. He had briefly dated the victim but was then seeing a woman in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who became pregnant with his son.
At trial, witnesses said Jacobsen was in Tennessee at the time of the sexual assault.
But the victim, who told police in initial interviews that she couldn’t identify her attacker, ultimately insisted it was Jacobsen who subdued and raped her. But DNA tests conducted by the GBI crime lab in 2017 found that the semen from the woman’s rape kit was not Jacobsen’s.
While in prison, Jacobsen closely followed the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995 and paid special attention to the defense team’s challenge of the state’s DNA evidence. It was led by Innocence Project founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, and Jacobsen said he read their book, “Actual Innocence,” about 15 times.
“I knew that DNA was going to clear me one day,” he said.
After the Georgia Legislature passed a law in 2003 that allows for post-conviction DNA testing, Jacobsen wrote to the Innocence Project. It took years before the nonprofit took on Jacobsen’s case, but it ultimately obtained permission for the DNA tests.
“That DNA test stands for itself,” Jacobsen said. “The only question now is whose DNA was it?”
Jacobsen boarded an Amtrak train Monday night to New York, where he will stay with his sister, wearing an ankle monitor while awaiting a possible trial.
Jacobsen acknowledged that he would have been released from prison years ago had he accepted the prosecution’s plea offer of a 30-year sentence with 15 years to serve behind bars. But he said he refused to confess to a crime he didn’t commit.
“It’s been a long time,” he said. “But I never gave up.”
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