State Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston, who called for yesterday's meeting to discuss Texas' wrongful convictions
At some point, the Texas State Senate's Web site should contain the audio from yesterday's "Roundtable on the Prevention of Wrongful Convictions," held down in Austin. Till then, here's the Houston Chronicle's account of the get-together, during which nine wrongfully convicted men freed by DNA evidence -- among them Dallas County's James Curtis Giles andBilly Smith and former prisoners from El Paso and Travis Counties -- asked law enforcement officials, attorneys and judges from across Texas to form a so-called "innocence commission," as State Sen. Rodney Ellis has called it.
Among those in Austin, of course, was Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, who said, according to the Chronicle, that "efforts by his office to review innocence claims have restored confidence in the criminal justice system locally." Said Watkins, in the Associated Press' account: "It can be argued that Texas ... may have one of the worst criminal justice systems in this country. We have to start where we have the most problems." Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast, who also attended, was encouraged by what he saw: "There is room for consensus on some of these questions, if participants coming at the topic from different angles can each set aside their parochialism and actually look for solutions instead of ways to block them." --Robert Wilonsky
As noted yesterday, 60 Minutes on Sunday will profile Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins -- specifically, his office's partnering with the Innocence Project to free prisoners using DNA evidence. Moments ago, CBS News posted a sneak peek at this weekend's episode: The video clip below is from the first on-camera interview James Lee Woodard's given since being released earlier this week, following 27 years of being imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Says Woodard of his conviction and incarceration, which he's protested ever since he was first tossed in jail: "You can only go one day at a time ever ... I just did the best I could … every day I have hope, 'Well, maybe today will be a better day.' [Hope is] all a man has.” --Robert Wilonsky
Just yesterday, during our weekly staff meeting at Unfair Park HQ, we were wondering when 60 Minutes was going to run its profile of Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins. Turns out, you can set your DVR to this very Sunday, when former KXAS and WFAA reporter Scott Pelley offers up a story titled "Exonerated." Says the teaser: "The Dallas County District Attorney’s office and the Innocence Project of Texas have joined forces to re-examine cases and have freed several inmates so far, including James Woodard, who spent 27 years in jail." If nothing else, good timing. --Robert Wilonsky
James Lee Woodard, who served 27 years in prison before his release today
In the wake of today's release of James Lee Woodard, yet another Dallas County prisoner exonerated by DNA evidence, State Senator Rodney Ellis of Houston revealed plans for a day-long Summit on Wrongful Convictions. It's scheduled to take place May 8 down in Austin, where, according to the Innocence Project's Web site, "key leaders from across the state" will gather "to determine the causes of wrongful convictions in Texas and identify reforms that can prevent them."
On his Web site today, Ellis offered his "condolences" to Woodard, who served 27 years in prison for a crime DNA evidence revealed he didn't commit. And, Ellis said in a prepared statement, "We have now had more than 30 DNA exonerations in Texas -- more than any other state in the nation. ... That's why I am asking criminal justice experts from around the state and both sides of the aisle to come together in the Texas Capitol on May 8th, review these tragic cases, identify what has gone wrong, make recommendations on how to make it right, and prevent these tragedies in the future." Further details about the summit are forthcoming, but it will be open to the public and take place at the Capitol building. --Robert Wilonsky
Mike Ware, head of the Dallas County District Attorney's Conviction Integrity Division
Seventeen Dallas County men have been freed from prison following DNA tests that have cleared their names. And till today, those cases have been fairly cut and dry. But Jeff Blackburn, senior counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas, wants to make one thing perfectly clear concerning the case of James Lee Woodard: "This not like any other DNA case" in Dallas County history.
Because tomorrow, after serving 27 years in prison for the New Year's Eve 1980 murder of a a woman near the Trinity River, Woodard is expected to become the 18th Dallas County man freed following DNA testing. But the DNA testing revealed only that Woodard wasn't guilty of sexually assaulting the woman. It did not clear him of the murder -- the crime for which he was convicted. Which is what makes this case extraordinary, says the Amarillo-based attorney.
"Most government entities would have said, 'So what? It's interesting the DNA partially cleared him, but that's not what he was convicted of,'" Blackburn tells Unfair Park. "And they would have taken a hyperlegal view of this and used it as an excuse not to investigate further. But Dallas allows one question to open the door for more. This is a search for truth, not a search for ways to justify the misdeeds of your predecessors."
Two weeks after Thomas McGowan became the 17th Dallas County prisoner released following DNA testing, 55-year-old James Lee Woodard becomes the 18th. On July 17, 1981, Woodard was sentenced to life in prison for the sexual assault and strangulation of a woman found near the Trinity River on New Year's Eve 1980. If he is indeed released tomorrow, as expected, Woodard will "be the longest-serving wrongly convicted man in the nation to be exonerated by DNA testing," according to the Associated Press. Unfair Park has left messages for the Dallas County District Attorney's Office and the Innocence Project of Texas; we will update shortly. --Robert Wilonsky
Caught on tape, a man is mugged during a seizure in downtown Dallas.
Do not be surprised if this downtown Dallas crime story begins to sweep the nation -- hell, it's already up on a Minnesota NBC affiliate's Web site. It's a crime made for TV: Just before midnight yesterday, an 18-year-old ROTC cadet on his way home to Mississippi suffered a seizure in front of the downtown Greyhound station, during which a man walked over not to help the kid, but to ... yup, pick his pocket. And a surveillance camera caught the whole thing -- including the arrest yesterday, when Frank White returned to the scene of the crime. --Robert Wilonsky
No, Evan Smith, "exonerated" is not "too strong a word" when describing what happened last week to Thomas McGowan, the 16th Dallas County prisoner freed after DNA testing revealed he wasn't guilty of the crime for which he'd been convicted and sentenced to prison for 23 years. Smith, the editor of Texas Monthly, interviewed Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins yesterday for a phone-call podcast, during which Watkins says the county's actually conducted 40 DNA tests, 16 of which resulted in exonerations.
Smith asks Watkins why the county didn't DNA test before his election. Simple, says Watkins: "This is a political position, and the political climate wanted that whole tough-on-crime approach, ands, fortunately, we have seen the political failures of that and gotten past that. ... It's politics. [And] the majority of the commissioners in Dallas County are Republicans." Then it gets really interesting. Worth a download. --Robert Wilonsky
From left to right: James C. Giles, Thomas McGowan, James Waller and Charles Chatman
Clay Graham, a newly minted lawyer with The Innocence Project of Texas, was on hand in the courtroom of Judge Susan Hawk yesterday and snapped photos as Thomas McGowan, wrongfully convicted of burglary and sexual assault, went free after 23 years in prison. McGowan was represented by Jason Kreag, an attorney for the Innocence Project of New York, and Barry Scheck, co-founder of the IPNY.
Seeing McGowan dig into his first post-prison meal -- chicken-fried steak -- was touching. Seeing James Giles, exonerated last year, give McGowan a $100 bill “to get his new life started,” was inspiring. Those photos are after the jump.
But maybe the best picture is the one above -- the one featuring four men wrongfully convicted in Dallas County. They are, from left to right, James C. Giles, exonerated on April 9, 2007; Thomas McGowan, April 16, 2008; James Waller, January 17, 2007; and Charles Chatman, January 3, 2008. --Glenna Whitley
The most stunning thing about the Thomas McGowan case, as mentioned below, is “how normal it is,” says Jason Kreag, staff attorney with The Innocence Project of New York. Kreag just arrived in Dallas so he could appear with McGowan at a hearing tomorrow afternoon in the courtroom of Judge Susan Hawk.
McGowan was convicted in 1985 of burglary and aggravated sexual assault and given two life sentences -- all because the Richardson police had his photograph from a traffic stop and used it in a photo line-up. And because a detective with the Richardson police department said something that pushed the victim into making a misidentification of the man who attacked her.
“He was picked out of a line-up with seven photos,” Kreag tells Unfair Park. “When the victim viewed the line-up, she initially said, ‘I think that’s him.’ The detective said something like, ‘You have to be sure -- yes or no?’ One would think that’s what the detective should do, because we want them to be sure. But it’s clear now that the statement forces the witness to make a decision. It was unduly suggestive and the foundation for the entire conviction."
Moments ago, Unfair Park received a media release from The Innocence Project that says tomorrow afternoon, Thomas McGowan -- who's spent the past 23 years behind bars after being convicted of rape and burglary in Dallas County -- will be released from prison, as DNA testing has revealed he did not commit the crimes. The Dallas County District Attorney's Office confirmed to Unfair Park McGowan's release. Says the Innocent Project's lengthy, detailed media release, which is after the jump in full:
In two separate trials in 1985 and 1986, McGowan was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and burglary and sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison. DNA testing on a rape kit collected from the victim proves that he was not the man who broke into her home in May 1985, stole several items and raped her.
Glenna will be along shortly with an interview with one of McGowan's attorneys. But a hearing is scheduled tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. at the Frank Crowley Courts Building, after which McGowan, who will turn 50 this year, will walk out a free man -- the 16th Dallas County prisoner exonerated following DNA testing. --Robert Wilonsky
At the end of last year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission adopted Federal Sentencing Guidelines that reduced penalties for crack cocaine offenses, after years of study and debate determined folks popped for crack usually got about three and a half years more prison time than people convicted of powder-cocaine offenses. The new guidelines went into effect March 3, and they were retroactive -- meaning, thousands of convicts became eligible for shorter sentences last month, while many were released outright. But this morning The Los Angeles Times finds that all isn't going swimmingly in the race to review cases -- in Dallas, in particular.
In Dallas, one judge has refused to allow federal defenders to represent crack offenders in his court, saying they have no right to counsel at this stage of the proceedings. That has left hundreds of inmates having to file jailhouse petitions to gain their freedom.
