Exonerated men speak at Capitol
05/09/2008
Exonerated men speak at Capitol Changes to police lineup policies, group to oversee crime lab suggested
AUSTIN
One by one, nine Wrongly convicted men stood up on the floor of the 'Texas Senate on Thursday to explain how innocent men ended up in prison and how to prevent it from happening again.
''I'm here to tell you 1 lost everything. I am still hurting. I am still broken," said James Giles, who spent IO years in prison for a rape he did not commit. "We can do better in the justice system. The system failed all ofus,"
A week after a man who spent 27 years in prison became the 18th Dallas County man since 2001 to have his eonviction tossed aside after DNA testing, state officials and men who lost years of their lives behind bars met in the Capitol to discuss what they said was 'Iexas' "disturbing number ofwrongful convictions,"
The event brought together lawyers, police chiefs, judges and lAwmakers, who sought to identifY systemic problems that could be addressed through changes in law.
Since 2001, DNA testing has cleared 33 Texans who spent a combined 427 years in prison, according to The Justice Project, a Washington, D.C.-based group. Eyewitness misidentification was a factor in 27 of those cases, the most common link.
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said he will sponsor a bill during next year's legislative session that would mandate police departments use specific procedures when presenting live lineups or photo arrays to eyewitnesses.
Among the more intriguing refonus mentioned was a crime lab
oversight group. Judge Barbara Hervey ofthe Court ofCriminal Appeals said Texas would be the first state in the nation to enact such a plan.
Along the same lines was the idea of regional crime and DNA labs operated independently of police departments, a topic broached by Houston Police ChiefHarold Hurtt. Reforms in Dallas County also drew praise. Under DistrictAttomey Craig Watkins, Dallas has begun a program in which law students, supervised by the Innocence Projeet of Texas, are reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates for post-conviction DNA testing.
The Associated Press
