Paul Black has seen the pictures of the Taylorsville woman who was raped in her home June 26 and doesn't blame her for wanting to find the person who tied her up in a bedroom closet, gagged her with tape and cut her hair.
He doesn't even blame her for picking him out as the perpetrator when shown a lineup of jail booking photos. He knew about the incident, which happened one block from Black's home, 3181 W. Robinwood Drive (5247 South).He does, however, blame the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office detectives for his July 20 arrest and the subsequent filing of felony charges against him for the crime.
"I don't blame them for questioning me, what happened to (the victim) was totally sick and wrong. I just blame the detectives for wanting to rush to judgment," said Black from his parents' home Tuesday morning. "I knew my DNA would tell it all."
It did.
On Monday, felony aggravated sexual assault, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary and evidence tampering charges filed against Black last week were dropped after DNA evidence cleared him of the crime.
Black's DNA -- taken through a blood sample -- did not match DNA samples collected at the home of the victim.
Without a match, prosecutors don't have enough evidence to go forward with charges, Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocum said.
Police have also looked at Black as a possible suspect in the June 28 stabbing death at the home of Danielle Omer. Omer was found stabbed to death after an arson fire at her home, which is also about one block from where Black lives with his parents. To date, he has not been linked to that crime.
Black was released from the Salt Lake County Jail Monday night. He's glad tobe home but said he doesn't feel much like leaving the house now that his name and photograph have been seen throughout the state in connection with a rape.
"I just feel like they brutalized my name and made it so I can't go out in the community for a while," said Black, 29.
But given the severity of the crime, Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office officials don't believe they overstepped their authority, sheriff's deputy Peggy Faulkner said.
"We have 72 hours to hold someone and get them charged or release them," she said. "We were holding him on four felonies and we had enough probable cause that we screened with the DA's office and a judge signed a warrant. If the DA and the judge feel we have enough to hold someone, we felt it was safer for the community to do that."
Letting a potentially violent and dangerous person go free raises another set of questions and possible problems, she added. Many criminals are difficult to locate a second time once they've successfully evaded police.
"Or if it turns out they are your suspect and you fail to get the charges filed within that 72-hour window so you let them go and they (harm) another person, then who's responsible?" Faulkner said.
Black is also angry with detectives for failing to tell him why he was rousted from his bedroom the night of June 20 and taken to the police station for questioning without being told why. Nor did he know a warrant had been obtained to search his home and that of an uncle.
He said he didn't know what the possible charges were until after he was booked into jail about 3 a.m. Wednesday.
During questioning, Black, who said he was at the home of a friend the night of the rape, began to piece together what detectives were after, as they started to ask him questions about his sexual habits and about the rape.
Detectives even told him they had an eyewitness who could place him at the scene.
"I knew I didn't do it, so I told them they had two choices, take me home, or take me to jail," he said. "It looked like I was heading for jail anyway, but I wasn't confessing to anything I didn't do."
Black admits it wasn't his first trip to the county jail. In the early 1990s, he spent a year there serving a sentence for burglary. Later, he was arrested for possession of a controlled substance, a charge that was later pleaded down to a misdemeanor. But he hasn't been in trouble since, he said.
"And I'm not a violent person, that's not my nature," he said.
With a history of burglary and theft and a physical description that police said closely matched that of the rape suspect, Black seemed like a viable suspect. The victim also identified Black as her assailant after reviewing a lineup of jail booking photos, but according to court documents said she was only "80 percent" sure.
"There were just a few too many things about this guy to leave him out of our investigation," Faulkner said. "I can't comment on what was said, I wasn't there. I think it just gets down to how the individual investigator works his case."
The good news, she said, is that DNA tests exist and prevent the wrong people from going to jail for crimes they didn't commit. Whenever DNA evidence is available from a crime scene, the tests are conducted, she said.
"The DNA test rules him out," said Faulkner.
Black declined to say if he's considering a lawsuit against the county for his treatment and erroneous arrest. At the moment, he said, he's concentrating on getting back his job as a dock worker and getting on with his life.
"The way they treated me, they thought they had their guy," said Black. "I think whoever ordered the search warrant should be fired. The way they went about it just wasn't right."