He Spent 28 Years in Prison After a Woman Dreamed He Sexually Assaulted Her

Clarence Moses-El spent 28 years in prison after a woman who had been sexually assaulted dreamed that he had raped her. The woman, identified only as T.S., told authorities his face came to her during a dream the night after the attack. Despite a lack of any additional evidence, police charged El-Moses with rape and assault, later convicted him of the charges, and sentenced him to 48 years in prison.

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On August 16, 1987, T.S. age 23 at the time, spent time drinking a few beers at a friend’s home. She then drove to her home and fell asleep on the sofa. Around 2:00 a.m. T.S. awoke as she was being sexually assaulted. The man, T.S. told authorities, punched her in the face and raped her anally and vaginally as she lay helpless on the sofa. He then dragged her upstairs by the hair and sexually assaulted her again. The man then fled the home.

The woman walked down the street to her sister’s home and called the police. She told officers she did not see her attacker’s face because it was dark in the house with all the lights off. She did tell them the man wore his hair slicked back in a way that resembled two of the men who she had met and drank beer with at the bar earlier in the night. The men’s names were Earl and L.C., she told them.

She Saw His Face in a Dream

T.C. was treated for six broken bones in her face at a local hospital. Doctors also performed a rape kit on her. When asked at the hospital who had attacked her, T.C. named three people: “L.C., Earl, Darnell,” she said.

Nearly two days passed when the woman, still hospitalized and on strong pain medication, called her sister and said she knew who had attacked her. They called him “Bubbles,” she told her sister.

Bubbles Arrested

Police did not waste any time arresting Bubbles, a 31-year-old man named Clarence Moses-El, charging him with second-degree assault, sexual assault, and burglary.

At Moses-El’s trial, T.S. now claimed she had seen her attacker’s face in the streetlight as he dragged her upstairs. She said she saw his face as he hit her during the sexual assault. She further testified that she saw his face again after the attack when he turned on the light briefly. She could see Moses-El well enough to identify him through one eye, she testified, since the other eye was swollen shut.

She went on to testify that she knew with certainty Moses-El was her attacker after dreaming about the assault. She told the court she knew Moses-El from the neighborhood and immediately knew he had attacked her after the dream.

The rape kit could not exclude Moses-El as the source of semen.

L.C. Jackson -the man T.C. originally claimed had attacked her -testified that T.C. had been drinking with his girlfriend in her home. Another witness testified Clarence was among the men at the home drinking beer.

With this, Clarence Moses-El was convicted of sexual assault, second-degree assault, and burglary and sentenced to 48 years in prison on April 7, 1988.

Moses-El Fights for His Freedom

Moses-El maintained his innocence. Determined to prove it, he raised $1,000 with help from other inmates to fund DNA testing. Before he could get a court order for biological evidence to be turned over for testing, the Denver Police Department tossed the rape kit and other evidence.

In 2005, DNA testing in an unrelated case connected L.C. to the 1992 sexual assaults of a woman and her 9-year-old daughter. He was convicted of the assaults and sentenced to what equals a life sentence in prison.

In 2012, L.C. penned a letter to Moses-El. In the letter, he stated, “I really don’t know what to say to you. But let’s start by bringing what was done in the dark into the light. I have a lot on my heart.”

He also confessed to Moses-El on three separate occasions that he had “rough sex” with T.C. on the night she was attacked -and the crime he was serving time for.

Speaking to an investigator, L.C. claimed he had consensual sex with the woman and that he had punched her in the face. He stated,

“I wanted to tell Moses that this was my involvement with her, this is what happened between me and her that night… There are certain things that need to be cleaned up.”

Moses-El filed a motion for a new hearing. Before his trial, L.C. recanted his confession, even writing a note claiming he had been at home with his girlfriend the entire night. During an evidentiary hearing on the motion for a new trial in 2015, Jackson testified that he had sexual intercourse with the woman and beat her up. His girlfriend also testified that he had not been with her during the time the woman had been attacked.

Moses-El Goes to Trial

Moses-El was granted a new trial and released on bond on December 22, 2015. After his release, a judge determined that police violated his constitutional rights by tossing out DNA evidence. At his new trial in November 2016, the victim again testified that Moses-El had attacked her, although admitted that she did not identify him until nearly two days later while hospitalized.

Forensic experts testified that Moses-El should have been excluded as the source of the DNA because he was a strong secretor with a blood type B and the evidence did not show any B antigens. Another expert testified the DNA evidence was consistent with a perpetrator with type O secretions; Jackson is a type O secretor.

The jury acquitted Moses-El of all charges on November 14, 2016. He was forever free.

T.C. still believes Moses-El is the man who sexually assaulted her that day, despite the evidence to the contrary.

He later filed a lawsuit against the Denver Police Department and former Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey, although it was dismissed two years later. He was successful in filing a state compensation claim. He was awarded $2,304,973 after the Colorado Attorney General called the 28 years Moses-El spent in prison a “travesty of justice.”