<p>Yet another wrongfully convicted person has been freed after lingering in a Texas prison for years. This has got to be a national record. Where are the law students from UTexas and Southern Methodist University etc. in these situations? It appears that only Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project and law schools from outside of Texas are interested in even investigating the more questionable prosecutions that seem to happen with frequency in the State of Texas.</p>
<p>remember, W, kept US safe.
but broke.
owing,
exhausted, and
a poorer future
:)</p>
<p>but we took care of the bad guys.</p>
<p>Please Longprime. I didn’t ask a political question. I’d appreciate perspective, not politics.</p>
<p>It is very sad situation, but the good news is that the technology today is far more reliable and likely to prevent the innocent from being wrongfully incarcerated for certain violent crimes.</p>
<p>The real fact is that Texas keeps evidence much longer than most other states/cities so it’s one of the few where you can go back and get 30 year old DNA evidence. Nice try though. They had witnesses who ID’d the guys.</p>
<p>I am happy that an organization like the Innocence Project exists and does such great work. </p>
<p>I’m not sure DNA played a role in the original conviction- I don’t think it did, to any great extent. The strangest part that I read was that while one eyewitness ( the rape victim) picked these two fellows out of a photo array, the other eyewitness, the boyfriend did not. It didn’t sound like they ever did a real line up- just a photo array, which can so easily be manipulated in favor of a desired outcome. </p>
<p>I’m happy this guy is out and that he still has a bit of time and life ahead of him.</p>
<p>Visual ID’s is most unreliable.
I heard that there have been 23 people who have release from TX prisons based on new irrefutable evidence. </p>
<p>My question is that if the so called evidence has been stored, why did it take so many years to perform the tests? Surely the tests are now cheaper to do than the cost of incarceration and the state’s attorney’s time. How many Texas Governors kicked the can to the next Governor?</p>
<p>We had a case in our neck of the woods where the DNA evidence was there, but the DA refused to use it. Finally when she was voted out the next DA had the test done, and the guy was found to be innocent. I just don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t do the tests when they are available. </p>
<p>Along with the fact that Dallas refrigerated and kept all the DNA evidence they have a new African American DA who has made this a priority.</p>
<p>“InJustice in Texas,Once Again”</p>
<p>IMO, the title, presupposes that Texas has a problem. Is it the prosecutors, the judicial, its Governor, the law, the defense, or the people. </p>
<p>A proper title, “Justice makes Good, in Texas” but that doesn’t get eyes.</p>
<p>barrons is correct… and thank goodness, wish more states kept their evidence as long. and although nothing could ever compensate the damage done to this poor person texas also has one of the most generous compensations for wrongful incareration…i read an article today that says they are paid about 80K for each year. I also read that the person could have taken earlier parole but refused to admit to the crime and register as a sex offender.</p>
<p>Texas is the second largest state by population. It leads the country with 34% of all executions.
Not the highest per capita but still quite high none the less. About two out of three executions (65.6%) are conducted in five states: Texas, Virginia, Missouri, Florida and Oklahoma.
I realize there are many circumstances of why one state would have such a high rate of death row convictions but it does seem like a unbalanced proportion. I cant believe there would be more violence in Texas then compared to California which has a denser population. Less tolerance perhaps? </p>
<p>[Facts</a> about capital punishment - the death penalty](<a href=“http://www.religioustolerance.org/execut3.htm]Facts”>http://www.religioustolerance.org/execut3.htm)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>? Would this imply that this particular instance, there was enough doubt to give an early parole to a convicted sex offender OR an Not Proven verdict?</p>
<p>not sure if it was an “early” parole or just a scheduled parole hearing</p>
<p>Texan declared innocent after 30 years in prison
By JEFF CARLTON</p>
<p>DALLAS - A Texas man declared innocent Tuesday after 30 years in prison had at least two chances to make parole and be set free - if only he would admit he was a sex offender. But Cornelius Dupree Jr. refused to do so, doggedly maintaining his innocence in a 1979 rape and robbery, in the process serving more time for a crime he didn’t commit than any other Texas inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.</p>
<p>“Whatever your truth is, you have to stick with it,” Dupree, 51, said Tuesday, minutes after a Dallas judge overturned his conviction.</p>
<p>Nationally, only two others exonerated by DNA evidence spent more time in prison, according to the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in wrongful conviction cases and represented Dupree. James Bain was wrongly imprisoned for 35 years in Florida, and Lawrence McKinney spent more than 31 years in a Tennessee prison.</p>
<p>Dupree was sentenced to 75 years in prison in 1980 for the rape and robbery of a 26-year-old Dallas woman a year earlier. He was released in July on mandatory supervision, and lived under house arrest until October. About a week after his release, DNA test results came back proving his innocence in the sexual assault.</p>
<p>A day after his release, Dupree married his fiancee, Selma. The couple met two decades ago while he was in prison.</p>
<p>His exoneration hearing was delayed until Tuesday while authorities retested the DNA and made sure it was a match to the victim. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins supported Dupree’s innocence claim.</p>
<p>Looking fit and trim in a dark suit, Dupree stood through most of the short hearing, until state district Judge Don Adams told him, “You’re free to go.” One of Dupree’s lawyers, Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck, called it “a glorious day.”</p>
<p>“It’s a joy to be free again,” Dupree said.</p>
<p>This latest wait was nothing for Dupree, who was up for parole as recently as 2004. He was set to be released and thought he was going home, until he learned he first would have to attend a sex offender treatment program.</p>
<p>Those in the program had to go through what is known as the “four R’s.” They are recognition, remorse, restitution and resolution, said Jim Shoemaker, who served two years with Dupree in the Boyd Unit south of Dallas.</p>
<p>“He couldn’t get past the first part,” said Shoemaker, who drove up from Houston to attend Dupree’s hearing.</p>
<p>Shoemaker said he spent years talking to Dupree in the prison recreation yard, and always believed his innocence.</p>
<p>“I got a lot of flak from the guys on the block,” Shoemaker said. “But I always believed him. He has a quiet, peaceful demeanor.”</p>
<p>Under Texas compensation laws for the wrongly imprisoned, Dupree is eligible for $80,000 for each year he was behind bars, plus a lifetime annuity. He could receive $2.4 million in a lump sum that is not subject to federal income tax.</p>
<p>The compensation law, the nation’s most generous, was passed in 2009 by the Texas Legislature after dozens of wrongly convicted men were released from prison. Texas has freed 41 wrongly convicted inmates through DNA since 2001 - more than any other state.</p>
<p>Dallas County’s record of DNA exonerations - Dupree is No. 21 - is unmatched nationally because the county crime lab maintains biological evidence even decades after a conviction, leaving samples available to test. In addition, Watkins, the DA, has cooperated with innocence groups in reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates for DNA testing.</p>
<p>Watkins, the first black district attorney in Texas history, has also pointed to what he calls “a convict-at-all-costs mentality” that he says permeated his office before he arrived in 2007.</p>
<p>At least a dozen other exonerated former inmates from the Dallas area who collectively served more than 100 years in prison upheld a local tradition by attending the hearing and welcoming the newest member of their unfortunate fraternity. One of them, James Giles, presented Dupree with a $100 bill as a way to get his life restarted.</p>
<p>At one point, Scheck pointed out that eyewitness misidentification - the most common cause of wrongful convictions - was the key factor that sent Dupree to prison. The attorney then asked how many of the others were wrongly imprisoned because an eyewitness mistakenly identified them. A dozen hands went in the air.</p>
<p>Not in attendance Tuesday was Dupree’s accused accomplice, Anthony Massingill, who was convicted in the same case and sentenced to life in prison on another sexual assault. The same DNA testing that cleared Dupree also cleared Massingill. He says he is innocent, but remains behind bars while authorities test DNA in the second case.</p>
<p>Dupree was 20 when he was arrested in December 1979 while walking to a party with Massingill. Authorities said they matched the description of a different rape and robbery that had occurred the previous day.</p>
<p>Police presented their pictures in a photo array to the victim. She picked out Massingill and Dupree. Her male companion, who also was robbed, did not pick out either man when showed the same photo lineup.</p>
<p>Dupree was convicted of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. According to court documents, the woman and her male companion stopped at a Dallas liquor store in November 1979 to buy cigarettes and use a payphone. As they returned to their car, two men, at least one of whom was armed, forced their way into the vehicle and ordered them to drive. They also demanded money from the two victims.</p>
<p>The men eventually ordered the car to the side of the road and forced the male driver out of the car. The woman attempted to flee but was pulled back inside.</p>
<p>The perpetrators drove the woman to a nearby park, where they raped her at gunpoint. They debated killing her but eventually let her live, keeping her rabbit-fur coat and her driver’s license and warning her they would kill her if she reported the assault to police. The victim ran to the nearest highway and collapsed unconscious by the side of the road, where she was discovered.</p>
<p>Dupree was convicted and spent the next three decades appealing. The Court of Criminal Appeals turned him down three times.</p>
<p>A service of YellowBrix, Inc.</p>
<p>Information provided by YellowBrix, Inc.</p>
<p>« back</p>
<p>With this much compensation, Texas would be wise to NOT test.</p>
<p>So it sounds like the solution to this issue is to dis-allow eyewitness testimony, or to instruct jurors regarding how statistically unreliable it is.</p>
<p>With all due respect, I am not certain how outcomes like this could have been avoided. The articles conveniently do not discuss whether the jury was aware that the boyfriend could not identify the suspect. Today, in certain instances, testing can confirm or rule out suspects. But years ago, it wasn’t possible. </p>
<p>I just read a story someplace about good policework and modern methods being used to arrest two guys who raped and murdered an old lady many years ago.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>**Wow! **</p>
<p>Do you really believe that? </p>
<p>Or are you just saying this to draw attention to yourself?</p>
<p>It has long been know that eyewitness testimony is very unreliable. I always thought a standard experiment in any number of classes is for a staged fight/incident to occur and then to sample the students’ recollection of actually what happened. Eyewitness testimony/identification should only be used as support for forensic evidence and not the sole basis or even the most important basis for prosecuting someone.</p>
<p>So much evidence has proven in certain instances to be unreliable. </p>
<p>Eyewitness testimony–a problem in this case, especially when the perp is not known by the victim.</p>
<p>Confessions–our area had a case where the cops got a confession from 3 teenagers that they killed one of the boys’ sister. Mentally coerced–real killer found later. </p>
<p>Fingerprints–it’s not as cut and dried as it is on CSI where the computer flashes MATCH on its screen. I was shocked at how much play the individual examiner has in determining a match when I read about a case where the local sheriff’s department said MATCH, but a former FBI fingerprint lab director said not even close to a match. Jury went with the sheriff department’s result.</p>
<p>DNA and other forensic work–some labs just do shoddy work with contaminated specimens. There was a local case where the specimens were contaminated with arsenic and the jury convicted a woman of murdering her husband. It wasn’t until her lawyer found some uncontaminated specimens that she was able to prove her innocence.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t know what to trust if I were a juror in a case…</p>
<p>Re: #16</p>
<p>It is not what I believe.
Accused got a fair trial, jury of peers, irrefutable evidence at that time.
The State has no other obligation. Justice took its course, and is blind. Unfortunately not all Justice is just.</p>
<p>Our system of justice allows for appeals. Because someone is found guilty based on evidence, does not allow for retrials. There was recent execution of a man accused of arson that killed his children. Expert witnesses said that the fire had all the signs of arson. Jury of peers, said the evidence was sufficient to convict with capital punishment. Later other expert witnesses proved that the fire evidence was caused by other reasons- Too bad, the accused had a proper justice, even though the given evidence was faulty. </p>
<p>Getting back to W: The evidence ‘suggested’ Saddam Hussein and by extension Iraqi’s had WMD. No evidence found. Did anyone say, “Oops, So Sorry.” ? to Anyone or to Anybody? International Law says that a country can go to war and be first strike, if it is in Its defense.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You know me. Gotta do what I gotta do.
**Have DS, 25yo, working engineer, 15 second spot of NPR, featured in neighborhood blog for his art. No Debt. **
:)</p>