Josh Horner, 42, was found guilty in 2017 of sexually abusing a child. He was sentenced to 50-years in prison – essentially the rest of his life – but only served 18 months after the Oregon Innocence Project looked into his case and found multiple errors, which resulted in his exoneration.
But having his conviction overturned and getting an apology from the prosecutor who tried his case isn’t enough to give Horner his life back, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB). Horner’s friend, Gary Lynch, never doubted him, but told OPR that if he didn’t know Horner, he might believe he was guilty.
“That kind of ambiguity sticks, especially so in Horner’s case, because the charges were dismissed without prejudice. And those two little words — without prejudice — make a big legal difference,” OPB reported. This means the case can be reopened in the future if more information is found, Redmond Police Department Lt. Curtis Chambers told OPB.
Chambers also told the outlet the case would be open for decades in case the accuser decided to come forward with more information.
“It’s important to believe juvenile sex crime victims and giving them opportunity to process and ultimately disclose in the time frame that’s comfortable to them,” Chambers told OPB.
In addition, police are keeping property seized from Horner as part of the investigation, even though it was deemed unnecessary.
Horner was accused of sexually assaulting his own daughter in 2006 when she was 5. He was charged with 17 counts of “rape, sexual assault, and other sex offenses,” according to the National Registry of Exonerations. This was the same year Horner and the girl’s mother divorced, and eight years later, in 2014, Horner got engaged to another woman, whom his daughter, now 13, didn’t like. That summer, the daughter was told she would start spending every other week with her father. She didn’t want that, so she told her mother her father had sexually abused her as a child.
She also claimed Horner killed her black Labrador, Lucy, in front of her for not giving in to his sexual demands. It was this claim that ultimately helped save Horner, as he was able to prove Lucy was alive and well. He had given the dog away because it attacked a neighbor’s chickens.
The daughter’s testimony “was often disjointed, and at times she lost her composure on the witness stand or was unable to remember details of the alleged assaults,” according to the NRE. Naturally, trauma “experts” dismissed these concerns by saying this was just evidence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder induced by the sexual assault. Horner’s defense argued the girl actually suffered from PTSD due to sexual abuse by her half-brother, and argued that many of the details she attributed to Horner resembled abuse from her half-sibling.
The Oregon Innocence Project reached out to Deschutes District Attorney John Hummel, who assigned an investigator to look into the case again. The Oregon Court of Appeals then reversed Horner’s conviction, after a motion was filed saying the trial judge was wrong to deny the defense the ability to offer a counter explanation for the daughter’s PTSD.
Hummel’s investigators tried to inform the daughter that the dog, Lucy, was still alive, but the girl “was uncooperative,” the NRE reported. “She failed to show up for a scheduled meeting, and then refused to talk with investigators when they tracked her down,” NRE wrote.
Hummel asked to dismiss the charges against Horner, and his motion was granted. Hummel, at the time, said he wasn’t sure this meant Horner was innocent, but he certainly was no longer sure Horner was guilty.
“Mr. Horner, on behalf of the state of Oregon, I apologize that untrue evidence was used against you in your trial,” Hummel said at the time. “That should happen to no one.”
As for Horner, who has now been out of prison for seven months, life isn’t completely back to normal. Formerly a social butterfly, Horner no longer trusts people. Before he was accused, he owned a plumbing company, but now won’t enter a stranger’s home.
“The one place he said he still feels like his old self is an industrial garage in Redmond. There, he climbed into the driver’s seat of a shiny blue race car,” OPB reported.
Horner also wants to help others who have been wrongly convicted, but ultimately just wants to move on.
“To sift through what other people might think, you know, and then hold on to that. That’s heavy damage,” Horner told OPB.