Dallas County Breaks the Record Again

By TChris, Section Innocence Cases
Posted on Thu Sep 18, 2008 at 09:21:16 PM EST
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Since this announcement in May that Dallas County had set a record with 17 exonerations of innocent prisoners due to new DNA testing, Dallas has broken its own record twice. TalkLeft reported exoneration 18 here. The next record-breaker could come tomorrow.

After nearly 26 years [in prison], the Dallas man [Johnnie Earl Lindsey] is one step closer to freedom this week after DNA test results showed that he was not the man who sexually assaulted the woman, said his attorney, Michelle Moore. ... "Hopefully he'll be released," said Ms. Moore, an assistant Dallas County public defender and a board member of the Innocence Project, a legal group that seeks to get wrongful convictions overturned.

Lindsey was convicted on the basis of a bad witness ID that probably resulted from showing the victim a suggestive photo array. [more...]

The suspect had been described as a black man in his 20s wearing no shirt, according to court records. Only two men in the lineup photos were shirtless, Ms. Moore said. And Mr. Lindsey was one of them.
"Juries back in the day believed that when a woman was raped, she must be able to identify her attacker," Ms. Moore said. "We know so much more now. There have been so many studies about how bad eyewitness accounts can be."

Jurors still believe victims are reliable witnesses. Fortunately, in recent years courts have been more open to permitting expert witnesses to educate jurors about the perils of eyewitness identification.

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Dallas County Breaks the Record Again | 3 comments (3 topical)

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What's happening in Dallas (5.00 / 1) (#3)
by txpublicdefender on Fri Sep 19, 2008 at 10:46:12 AM EST

I just want to point out, as I know you have on this site before, TChris, that there are a multitude of reasons for Dallas's record number of DNA exonerations, only one of which is the historic "win-at-all-costs" attitude of the DA's office there. There are factors like that which led to the wrongful convictions in the first place. And then, there are the factors that have led to the exonerations, and those are, namely: the DA's office working with the state Innocence Project to identify cases that should be reinvestigated (and these are not limited to just DNA cases); and the fact that the local crime lab has a longstanding policy of never discarding biological evidence from a case, meaning that crime scene samples are available for cases like this one, even though it is over 25 years old.

As someone who practiced as a public defender in Dallas for a number of years, I have firsthand knowledge of the philosophies and tactics of the previous DA administrations there, but I also want to make sure that credit is given. I fear that if all these exonerations do nothing but give the county and its system a black eye, it will just give prosecutors in other jurisdictions even more reason not to follow in Dallas's footsteps and take the necessary steps to correct their mistakes.

TChris, I just wanted to update you on a (none / 0) (#1)
by Teresa on Thu Sep 18, 2008 at 10:17:30 PM EST

case you've written about previously. Paul House, the Tennessee man who was on death row and is apparently going to be tried again.

Union County District Attorney General Paul Phillips confirmed this afternoon that a hair found in the hand of slaying victim Carolyn Muncey did not belong to her accused killer, Paul Gregory House.

The DA now says this helps his new theory.

However, he insisted that this news did not destroy the case against House but instead bolstered a new prosecution theory.

He spent 22 years on death row.

Always so (none / 0) (#2)
by tres on Fri Sep 19, 2008 at 06:17:01 AM EST

proud to live in Texas...sigh.