TAMPA — James Bain is 55 and struggling to pass his driving test. He's taken it twice this year and failed both times.



He had a license in the 1970s. He also had a job and a future. But someone raped a 9-year-old boy in Lake Wales. The child said it was Bain. He was arrested and convicted and, at age 19, was sent to prison for life.



In December, after DNA tests proved he was innocent, a judge in Polk County set him free .



Bain is now trying to rebuild his life. He lives in Tampa with his mother, Sarah Reed, who's 77 and needs a walker to get around. He has an $8-an-hour job, a girlfriend, a checking account and is struggling to get that drivers license.



"The whole thing has changed," he said, frustrated by the questions on the written test, "the whole thing."



He may be talking about the driving test, but in the 35 years that he was locked up, the world changed in ways he could never imagine.



Bain is amazed by computers, cars — because now "they talk to you" — and cell phones.



As he stood outside the Polk County Courthouse moments after his release Dec. 17, he was filled "with a feeling I cannot explain." There was a crowd and celebration. Then his sister said his mother was on the phone.



"I'm looking for a [phone] cord," he said. His sister then put the small, squarish device in his hand. "I held it backwards. Everybody was laughing at me."



Freedom



Bain is one of 12 Florida inmates who have been freed or exonerated by DNA since 2000, thanks, in large part, to the Innocence Project of Florida, a nonprofit that fights to free the innocent.



Now, the Florida Supreme Court and Florida Legislature, wanting to stop more wrongful convictions, have created and funded the Florida Innocence Commission, a panel charged with identifying what went wrong in those cases and creating fixes.



Still, there are sure to be more. The Innocence Project is currently working on dozens of cases, said executive director Seth Miller. So are other lawyers and inmates.



Bain, though, is a standout: He is the innocent man who, upon his release, had spent more time in prison than any other DNA exoneree in the United States.



Despite all those lost years, he is not angry.



Not at the police, who wrongfully arrested him. Not at the courts that wrongfully convicted him and rejected four appeals. Not at the boy who falsely accused him, now a 46-year-old man who has been in and out of state prison on drug and theft charges.



"At that time, all this time, I have sympathy for him," Bain said. "I have sympathy for his family. ... His family did what they had to do to get justice. They just had the wrong person."



He's also not angry with the jury that convicted him. The foreman was Ron Elliott, now 73 and a retired airline pilot who lives in Okeechobee. Elliott said he's heartsick about what happened. When he learned that DNA had cleared Bain, he burst into tears, he said.



"You send a guy to prison wrongfully, how could you not feel that revulsion for something that you'd been responsible for?" he asked.



Bain just wants to live a good life, get married, have children and provide for his mother, who never abandoned him or gave up hope.



"There's no way to make up for the 35 years I've lost," he said. "I've got to take the rest of what God gives me."



The rape, the trial



Before the night of the rape, March 4, 1974, Bain had never been arrested. He was a 19-year-old special-education high-school student, working at a Lake Wales box company. The child was someone whose family he knew.



The boy told authorities that he awoke in the arms of a man who had pulled him from bed and carried him out a window. The man led him to a softball field, forced him face-down on the ground and sodomized him.



The boy said the rapist was a black man with sideburns who called himself Jimmy. The victim's uncle knew a Jimmy who wore sideburns — Jimmy Bain. He was arrested that night.



Four alibi witnesses told jurors that Bain was with them that night, and a defense-hired expert testified that based on blood type, the semen found in the boy's underpants could not have come from Bain.



A state expert from the FBI, though, told jurors that the semen could have been Bain's. There was no DNA evidence analysis at the time, but testing on the same garment 35 years later would prove him wrong.



The most powerful witness, said the jury foreman, was the boy. He cried on the stand and told jurors that he knew James Bain was the rapist.



When the verdict was read, Bain looked at his mother.



"He turned around and looked at me to tell him what it means. That was the worst day of my life," she said. "He didn't know what it meant."



In prison



At first Bain was overwhelmed by prison. He stood 5-foot-5 and weighed 125 pounds.



"I was very afraid. I didn't know what was going to happen," he said. "I thought I was going to die there."



But he learned to befriend older inmates and stay out of trouble. He learned a trade he's proud to have mastered: welding. He also learned to play chess, a game he loves.



He spent time in six state prisons during the past 35 years. He has nothing good to say about any of them.



"There isn't nothing pretty in there."



His life now



It's Monday, just after 9 a.m., and Bain climbs into his boss's Lincoln Navigator. Stephanie Pisarski owns Sunset Park Massage Supplies. She has been driving Bain to and from work since she hired him in September. That's because he doesn't have a license.



She's trying to fix that. During their commute she drills him on traffic signs, their shapes and colors. During downtime at the office, she reads to him from the state driving manual.



"He reads a little bit," she said, but not well enough to read the manual or packing slips in her warehouse. She pays him every Friday and drives him to the bank. She showed him how to fill out a deposit slip and keep a checkbook register.



"It's been a struggle, but it needs to be done," she says. "He needs to get back into society."



A social worker at the Innocence Project of Florida helped him get glasses and credit cards and line up a mental-health counselor, whom he sees every Thursday.



And its lawyers have petitioned the state, asking that Bain be paid $50,000 for each year he was wrongfully locked up. That totals $1.75 million.



He doesn't want a big house or a fancy car. He plans to spend the rest of his mother's life in her home, a modest and tidy white-brick house south of downtown Tampa where she has lived for more than 30 years.



He also hopes to get married next year. He met his fiancée, Mallelin Duran, a native of Cuba, within two weeks of his release. She works at the same clothing factory as his sister.



Duran, 35, speaks almost no English. Bain speaks no Spanish.



He is wary of people trying to take advantage of him, especially if he gets a big payout, he said. But Duran is different. His sister trusts her, so he does, too. Duran has a 3-year-old daughter, Nallely (pronounced na-YEL-ee). Bain calls her "Jelly."



On a recent Sunday, Bain puts on a shirt and tie and takes the little girl to Westshore Baptist Church, a mostly white congregation where his mother has been a member for years. It has welcomed him warmly.



Members have taken turns shuttling him to and from the drivers-license bureau and have a volunteer lined up to drive him there the following Tuesday.



After church, he goes into the kitchen to prepare lunch for Jelly and his mother, who has been in her bedroom, watching a televangelist. First Bain warms a bottle of milk, supplemented with applesauce, for Jelly.



"OK, Honey," he says, "let me know if it's hot enough for you."



She walks off, bottle in hand.



He puts leftover steak and rice in the microwave for his mother. She comes into the kitchen to make sure he gets it right. She pulls out the food, places it in the basket of her walker and shuffles back to her bedroom.



"Mom, that OK?" he calls to her moments later. "You need me to cut the meat up?"



"No," she says. "I've got a spoon."



Later, while driving home from a Popeyes fried-chicken stand, where Bain picked up lunch for himself, Jelly falls asleep in the car. He carries her inside and covers her with a blanket.



This is what he wants, he says, to care for the people he loves.



The driving test, again



Back at work the next day, Bain cleans Pisarski's store. He takes out the trash, vacuums the floor and picks cigarette butts from the ashtray out front. Pisarski sits him down next to her in the back office and reads to him passages from the state driving handbook. His mother's 2002 Toyota Camry sits ready for him to drive as soon as he gets his license.



"We've got to get on it today big time," she says. "How many times can you take this test?"



"I think five," Bain says.



The first time, he missed seven questions, the second time two.



After an intense day of studying, he tries again. Pisarski calls with the news:



He passed.



"I studied and I studied, and I didn't miss one of them," Bain says. "I'm happy, very happy."



Rene Stutzman can be reached at rstutzman@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6394.