The life of Thomas Doswell, a man who languished for 19 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of a rape, came to an end Christmas Day when he died of heart failure, according to his family.
But the journey that took Doswell to his final day was filled with so many twists, good and bad, that his brother on Sunday described it as a “whirlwind.” He went from a cell at a state penitentiary in Forest County to the stage at Heinz Hall, only to return to jail on unrelated charges years later.
Doswell, 56, the sixth of eight children and a father of four, was found dead Friday by a passer-by on the walkway of the Meadow Street Bridge in Larimer. The Homewood resident, known by family and friends as “Tommy,” spent more than one-third of his life behind bars, most of it time when he should have been a free man.
Doswell’s legal trouble began at 5:45 a.m. on March 13, 1986, at what was then Forbes Hospital in the East End when a man followed a female service worker into the hospital cafeteria, locked the doors, tossed her on the floor, threatened to kill her and raped her. When another employee started banging on the locked door, the man ran and eluded capture.
The woman was taken to Shadyside Hospital, where physical evidence of the rape was taken, but DNA tests at the time were not advanced enough to determine the source of semen found on her.
Doswell denied his guilt from the beginning, saying that he was arrested because he had been charged with, but not convicted of, another rape. He was a 25-year-old father of two when he was sentenced to 13 to 26 years in prison.
Doswell was denied parole four times because he continued to deny his guilt. Only after he contacted the Innocence Project, which provides legal help to the incarcerated, a DNA test was organized. The results exonerated him, and he was set free on Aug. 1, 2005.
In 2009, he reached a $3.7 million settlement with the city of Pittsburgh for the wrongful conviction.
Those years that Doswell spent in prison didn’t go to waste. His brother, Vernon Doswell, said Thomas Doswell learned to read and write music in the penitentiary and also mastered seven instruments.
“He could take a song and make it his own,” said Vernon Doswell of Homewood. “My brother — he was that good at his art.”
Favoring gospel and R&B music, Thomas Doswell found himself on the stage of Heinz Hall on March 11, 2008. That night, he opened for B.B. King.
“He sang ‘I Need You Now,’ a song about the power of God to usher a person through any tragedy, which he felt most greatly helped him to overcome his long incarceration,” according to a 2009 article on the Innocence Project website.
“He got a 15-minute standing ovation,” Vernon Doswell said.
According to the Innocence Project, Thomas Doswell also performed with the rock band Pearl Jam as a guest musician during a May 2006 concert in Camden, N.J.
But even as an exonerated man with a penchant for the gospel and talent for music, legal issues found a way back into his life.
In November 2006, Doswell was jailed on charges of attempting to hire a man to kill a woman with whom he had been in a relationship. The charges were withdrawn after a key witness did not show up for the trial.
Then, in 2014, he was again jailed after being pulled over at a gasoline station in Homewood the previous year and was found to have marijuana, crack cocaine, a stun gun and a .38-caliber revolver for which he did not have a license.
At the time, Doswell’s attorney, James DePasquale, said, “He did something that was wrong. He didn’t employ the gun to harm anybody.” Vernon Doswell said his brother had the gun for protection.
Thomas Doswell pleaded guilty in October 2013 to charges stemming from the incident and was sentenced to 11½ months to 23 months in jail and three years’ probation.
Vernon Doswell said his brother had heart issues, and that he had taken his brother to the doctor several times. He said that on Friday his brother was taking a walk to rebuild his energy when he collapsed on the bridge.
Andrew Goldstein: agoldstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1352.
First Published: December 28, 2015, 5:00 a.m.