(Taylor Media Services) Charles Allen Chapman became a free man last week – after spending 27 years in prison for a rape which DNA testing proved he could not have committed. Chapman had been sentenced to a 99-year prison term after he was convicted in the 1981 rape of a Dallas woman. He is believed to have served more time in prison that any other Dallas County inmate who was later exonerated.

However, Chapman is just the latest of dozens of inmates, most of them Black, to be freed from prison by DNA evidence in the past few years. Interestingly, Dallas County, Texas has been forced to free more wrongly convicted men than any other county in the nation. Chapman was the 15th person freed in the county since 2001.

Most of those freed have benefited from the work of a group known as the Innocence Project – a legal organization which has worked throughout the country to free wrongly convicted persons. During an interview, Chapman said he was “somewhat bitter” about losing 27 years of freedom but added that with the help of family he wanted to get on with his life. He is now 47 years old.