ben kiper
7 Years Lost
Cause of Conviction: Sexual Abuse
County: Butler
Trial/Plea: Trial
Race: White
Year 1999
Sentence: 55
Time Served: 7
Date Sentence Vacated: May 6, 2006
Reason Sentence Vacated: Perjury
Cause of Wrongful Conviction: Perjury
Ben Kiper was convicted of sexually abusing his stepdaughter and sentenced to 55 years in 1999. The Commonwealth charged Kiper with Rape and Sexual Abuse after his stepdaughter supposedly told her mother, Kiper’s wife, that Kiper had abused her two years earlier. The allegations were raised during a custody hearing between Kiper’s wife and his stepdaughter's father. There was no physical evidence or other evidence that any abuse had occurred.
Shortly after Kiper’s conviction, his stepdaugther was placed in a children’s hospital. During her stay, she told care providers that the accusations were false and that her stepmother had told her what to say to law enforcement and the court. The girl, at age 15, testified in an evidentiary hearing about why she made the allegations and what her father and stepmother had threatened to do if she did not say what they told her to say.
Recanted testimony is not readily accepted by the courts in Kentucky, but - in Kiper’s case - there was no other proof that the abuse ever even happened. With no other evidence against Kiper, the trial court granted him a new trial based on new evidence, and the indictment was dismissed through an agreed order in 2006.
For more information on the case:
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=3353