Policy

This Week in Innocence

|

There are so many things wrong with this story, it's hard to know where to begin.

Woods was arrested in 2006 on child molestation charges, his case put off nine times ultimately never making it to trial. Eventually, attorney Jennifer Hinkebein Culotta got the case last year, visited Woods in the Clark County jail and she had a lot of questions about the allegations.

"They alleged somebody had placed a 4-foot long weed-eater wire into the penis of a child," said Culotta, of Culotta and Cullota LLP in Jeffersonville, Indiana…

Woods spent two years in jail before he met with a single defense attorney.

"I just thought medically that cannot be physically possible that a weed-eater wire that's not sterilized would stay in a body eight years without any possible medical repercussions," Culotta said of reviewing the case.

After she petitioned for the child's medical reports last year, Culotta discovered an important piece of evidence that occurred one year before Woods was arrested. "In the medical reports, one year prior there had been a CT scan of the pelvis and it's apparent that there was no weed-eater wire there," Culotta said of the findings.

The news was enough to get Woods out of jail just in time for last Christmas. Still the case isn't over yet.

"In this situation we had police officers, prosecuting officers, we had the court system we had defense attorneys, if all those people are not actively investigating the case and working the case properly then you end up like we have with Donald Woods," Culotta said. "An innocent person sitting in jail for two plus years."

Woods is suing.