Death Penalty

On Sunday, 60 Minutes profiled Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins, who has proactively sought out and exposed the wrongful convictions of his predecessor, Wade.  In all, 18 men from Dallas County have been cleared by DNA testing; a total of 33 men have been cleared across Texas.   At a "Summit on Wrongful Convictions" in Texas on May 8, legislators, lawyers, exonerees, law enforcement officials, and even a couple of judges discussed how to deal with the inescapable fact that Texas has been getting it wrong an awful lot.   AP coverage of the summit is here, and video of the conference itself should eventually be available here.  An April 30 press conference feature Texas Senator Rodney Ellis announcing the summit is there now.

So, where to begin?

As DA Watkins pointedly remarked, "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."

Suggestions offered included:

• Mandating how lineups or photos are presented to eyewitnesses. (James Waller, who is 6 foot 4, spent 10 years in prison for a rape committed by a man the victim described as being 5 foot 8.)
• Creating an authority that would oversee crime labs the way a health department oversees restaurants.
• Setting up crime labs that are independent of police departments.
• Re-examining how appeals filed by inmates are treated. (James Woodard, for example, who spent 27 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, was labeled an abuser of the system for filing too many appeals and requests for DNA testing.)

It's a start, but one of the biggest "wrongful convictions" problems in Texas is in fact the death penalty.  Texas criminal justice is massively and obviously flawed, and yet the Lone Star State has executed 405 people in 25 years, and has 8 more already scheduled for this year.  While 33 innocent men in Texas prisons did get DNA tests and were rightly exonerated, how many others have not been lucky enough to get tests, or did not have DNA evidence in their cases?  And how many of those are on death row now, or perhaps have already been executed?  The first step for Texans concerned about wrongful convictions should be to stop the execution conveyor belt.

Brian

DPAC