The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office is opposing a proposed request for a new trial for a Detroit man who has spent 25 years in prison for a rape that, according to the University of Michigan's Innocence Clinic, he didn't commit.

The prosecutor's remark, to me, is as frightening as it is arrogant and ignorant.

How can science—that is to say, physical proof—not absolutely trump someone's testimony if the two are in conflict? How is testimony alone enough to keep a man locked away when the evidence, the science, if you will, says he deserves to be set free?

And how can a prosecutor, someone who's supposedly committed to pursuing truth, defend such a miscalculation so brazenly when it appears to have resulted in a 25-year false imprisonment?

As the story details, Vinson was convicted in 1986 for raping a 9-year-old girl, although he and his parents said he was at home at the time the crime occurred. Despite their testimony, a technician at the Detroit Crime Lab claimed that, because because his blood antigens don't show up in bodily fluid, Vinson couldn't be ruled out as a suspect. He was sentenced to 10 to 50 years.

When DNA testing emerged, Vinson pushed in 1991 to have the child's sheets analyzed for semen stains. Fifteen years later, he found out the sheets were destroyed.

But a test in 2009 proved that, contrary to earlier beliefs, Vinson's blood antigens do indeed show up in bodily fluids. Given that, the sheets would've contained clear evidence of his presence had he raped the child.

They didn't, and it's highly likely he didn't. And so the Innocence Clinic is challenging the prosecutor's office...yet again. Two years ago, Sandra Svoboda at the

Metro Times

of the tragic case of Dwayne Provience, a Detroit man the Clinic had proven was

. Provience was eventually freed. Before that, the Clinic

In each of those cases prosecutors were reluctant to consider new trials or tossing out the convictions.

Some might say they understand how prosecutors could get it wrong before we had the, ahem, science that could help determine someone's guilt. (Me, I still think it's far too easy for them to convict men like in cases like Provience's, but that's another discussion.)

But even if you give the prosecutors the benefit of the doubt, how do you justify the continued recalcitrance? How is it then somehow OK to ignore evidence because someone else said something different?

If the Clinic is right, the courts made a grave mistake. And with

men like Vinson can expect little in the way of recompense and even less in the way of reform.

But we still have an obligation to what's right.

Sadly, the real rapist probably won't ever pay. And after 25 years of his life lost behind prison bars, Karl Vinson will never get back what he is owed.