Overview
- Prosecutors filed a nolle prosequi on March 18, formally dropping the case and stating they lack a good-faith basis to proceed.
- A Superior Court judge granted Rosa a new trial in 2023, citing new DNA results and modern research on eyewitness identification.
- Rosa was convicted in 1993 for the 1985 killing of Gwendolyn Taylor, in a case that leaned on blood-type forensics and brief nighttime eyewitness accounts.
- Subsequent DNA testing contradicted key forensic links, and the DA hired its own expert before conceding in 2022 that a new trial was warranted.
- Defense lawyers and the New England Innocence Project describe the dismissal as an exoneration; Rosa served 34 years before his 2020 release and is counted as the state's 100th exoneree, according to his attorneys.