Man Exonerated By DNA After 19 Years In Prison Found Dead

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A man who spent 19 years in prison on a rape conviction before he was exonerated by a DNA test - only to be jailed last year on other charges - was found dead on a bridge walkway on Christmas, authorities said.

Thomas Doswell, 56, of Pittsburgh, was spotted by a passer-by Friday afternoon on the Meadow Street Bridge walkway in the Larimer neighborhood, authorities said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy was performed, but results are pending further toxicology and tissue tests, the Allegheny County medical examiner's office said Sunday.

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Doswell was arrested in March 1986 in the rape of a 48-year-old woman at the former Forbes Hospital and was convicted and sentenced to 13 to 26 years in prison. He was denied parole four times after refusing to accept responsibility for the crime.

Doswell was freed in 2005 after a DNA test indicated that someone else had committed the rape. He sued police and the city and reached a $3.8 million settlement after alleging that a photo lineup was tainted because his mug shot was marked with an "R'' and was the only one so marked. At that time, police routinely marked rape suspects' pictures with that letter; the photo had been made for a 1984 rape case in which Doswell was charged but acquitted.

In January 2014, Doswell was sentenced to 11½ to 23 months in the county jail after pleading guilty to evidence-tampering and possession of drugs and a gun, a weapon he was barred from legally possessing because of a 30-year-old robbery conviction.

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