After serving 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Michael VonAllmen shared his journey to exoneration with law students on Friday at the UK Law Courtroom.
VonAllmen was indicted in 1981 and sentenced to 35 years in prison for rape, sodomy and robbery. He was paroled in 1994 after serving 11 years in prison.
He was finally exonerated on June 4, 2010, after over 27 years of trying to prove his innocence.
VonAllmen discussed his story to a small group of UK law students, describing events from his indictment to receiving help from The Kentucky Innocence Project (KIP).
“The weight of the conflict has been lifted… I can’t put into words [how it feels] to be able to stand before you and not be recognized as a sex offender,” VonAllmen said.
According to The Kentucky Innocence Project’s Facebook page, KIP “provides quality investigation and legal assistance to Kentucky prisoners with provable claims of actual innocence.” VonAllmen is the 10th exoneree since the KIP started in 2000.
After 15 years of parole, VonAllmen contacted the KIP when he read about the program in a newspaper article.
“That was a miracle that just fell out of the sky right on my kitchen table,” VonAllmen said about when he first read the article. He said he would have contacted the KIP much sooner if he had known it existed.
Linda Smith, Supervising Attorney, introduced VonAllmen, saying that if a movie were to document VonAllmen’s story, people would not believe the story “because of all the twists and turns that took place.”
“He believed in our [legal] system even though he was shown it has a whole lot of flaws,” Smith said.
VonAllmen’s story starts in 1981, when a young woman was robbed and raped in Louisville. Two days after the crime was committed, VonAllmen went to the same bar where the victim was picked up, not knowing that people at the bar had a drawing of the perpetrator, who happened to look similar to VonAllmen.
Some people from the bar followed VonAllmen home, where they recognized a blue-green 1968 Chevrolet the perpetrator was said to have driven. Though the car was actually VonAllmen’s neighbor’s car, he was reported to the police and two weeks later he was arrested.
“There was the green car, there was the big curly headed guy, let’s be good citizens and report him,”
VonAllmen said about the case being built against him.
The victim soon identified VonAllmen as the perpetrator by picking him out of a photo lineup.
“Never at any point did they come looking for a gun, or the ring that this guy stole from her,” VonAllmen said.
Though VonAllmen had an alibi and said he had a “host of people who were certain they were with me,” he was convicted and sent to jail.
From here, the legal process began. VonAllmen hired an attorney, however his attorney dropped the case when the hairs from the rape kit came back inconclusive. He then took a public defender, but said he was not too worried because he knew he was innocent and only needed an attorney to “organize the events to present them properly.”
But soon, he realized proving his innocence was going to be difficult, and VonAllmen immediately began the appellate process and pushed for a polygraph test.
While in jail, VonAllmen took the polygraph test and passed. Though he passed, the results were thrown out because the polygraph operator was indicted on arson charges, “so his credibility was shot,” VonAllmen said.
A few months later, a possible suspect came up and VonAllmen said he held some hope that he could be the actual perpetrator. But the lead soon reached a dead end.
After six more months, totaling three years in jail, VonAllmen passed another polygraph test. But because VonAllmen was caught engaging in the marijuana business behind bars, his case was deferred for another six months.
At this point VonAllmen said he was confident he would be released the next time he was to go in front of the parole board.
But he ultimately was deferred two more times for a total of six years to complete a rehabilitation program.
Finally at his fourth parole meeting, VonAllmen was released for parole after 11 years in prison.
Once he was released, VonAllmen said he had to “get back into the game of life” and began plumbing.
Fifteen years later, he read the article about the Kentucky Innocence Project and the KIP slowly built a case proving he was innocent.
The KIP ultimately found Ronald Tackett had most likely committed the crime, when his ex-wife contacted VonAllmen and described her ex-husband.
“She gave us the information of the car, the gun, and his behaviors,” VonAllmen said. “She just provided so much information about this guy… not only did she have the information, it was supported by documentation that we had.” However they could not confront Tackett because he had died five years after the crime was committed.
The Kentucky Innocence Project built a solid case proving VonAllmen’s innocence through eyewitness misidentification and invalidated forensic science. The judge reversed the conviction saying the evidence showed he did not commit the crime, VonAllmen said.
“I stand before you now, in the midst of changing my identity,” VonAllmen said about how is life has changed since his exoneration.
“I have been a convicted sex offender for practically all my adult life… You kind of shrink when you say it,” VonAllmen said.
Part of the crowd on Friday included third year law students Natasha Farmer and Lauren Nichols. Both law students have an externship with KIP in which they work with the investigators to prove innocence in a murder case.
Farmer said that working with the KIP has been the most practical thing she has done in law school, and that VonAllmen’s case shows the mistakes in the legal system.
Nichols said that by listening to VonAllmen speak, she is motivated to work harder on her own KIP case.
“It makes you think long and hard about putting people behind bars,” Nichols said.
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