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Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Bruce Donald Godschalk Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Bruce Donald Godschalk
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Part front matter for Part III The Fallacy of Finality: Prosecutors and Post-Conviction Claims of Innocence
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Published:March 2012
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Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Bruce Donald Godschalk
On the night of July 13, 1986, an intruder slipped into a townhouse in an apartment complex outside Philadelphia and raped the occupant, Elizabeth Bednar. Less than two months later, a man gained entry to an apartment in the very same complex and raped Patricia Morrissey. The modus operandi appeared similar in the two crimes, as did the victims’ descriptions of the perpetrator: a 5-foot, 10-inch white male with a medium build. Medical examinations of each victim revealed the presence of semen. DNA technology had not yet made inroads into the criminal justice system, which meant that investigators subjected the semen only to serology tests. The blood type of Morrissey’s assailant could not be determined, but the crime lab concluded that Bednar’s attacker had Type B blood.
Proceeding under the assumption that the same perpetrator had committed both assaults, the police prepared a composite sketch based on the victims’ recollections. A woman in the community alerted the police several months later that the sketch resembled her brother, Bruce Godschalk.1Close The police put a picture of Godschalk in a photo array in January 1987. Having previously observed two photo arrays, Morrissey looked at this new set of pictures and identified Godschalk as her attacker. Bednar was unable to identify anyone. The police decided to question Godschalk in light of the Morrissey identification (and the fact that Godschalk’s physical attributes matched the initial descriptions). Godschalk confessed to the crime at the end of the interrogation. According to the police, his statement contained facts that had not been disseminated to the public and that only the rapist would know.2Close
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