Not Guilty: Thirty Six Actual Cases in Which
An Innocent Man Was Convicted (1957)
by Judge Jerome Frank and Barbara Frank

Excerpt from Chapter 7

Alexander Ripan

In 1919, in Detroit, Michigan, a prosperous farmer, Luca Tirpula was shot and killed. Alexander Ripan, charged with the murder, was brought to trial and convicted mainly on this evidence: The bullet taken from Tirpula's body dropped easily through the barrel of Ripan's revolver, which had been fired recently. Ripan was sentenced to a life term. In 1929, after he had served ten years, he escaped from prison, remaining at large for six years. In 1935 a former fellow convict, recognizing him, reported him to the police. Back in the penitentiary, Ripan was subjected to severe punishment for his escape. Meanwhile Crane, the prosecutor who had brought Ripan to trial, now not satisfied with its results, had been working on the prisoner's behalf. In 1939, Crane obtained a new trial for Ripan, at which an expert testified that, in the light of recent discoveries in the ballistics field, the very evidence which had sent Ripan to the penitentiary now proved him innocent: A bullet fired from a revolver could not be reinserted in the barrel of that same weapon without great difficulty. The judge sitting at the new trial dismissed the murder indictment. Ripan had been fourteen years in prison.

SOURCE

1. Detroit Free Press, November 25, 1944.