Innocence Blog
March 5, 2007
Roy Brown Exonerated
Roy Brown spent 15 years in New York prisons for a murder he didn't commit. In 2003, he requested police documents from his prison cell and learned that an alternate suspect had been overlooked. Brown wrote that man a letter and the man committed suicide days after receiving the letter. Now, DNA testing has proven that the alternate suspect actually committed the crime, and Brown was officially exonerated today in a Cayuga County, New York courtroom.
Click here for more on Brown's case.
New Dallas DA wants to be “smart on crime”
From today’s Washington Post:
Craig Watkins is still settling into his 11th-floor office overlooking the city skyline, hanging up pictures, arranging his plaques — and revolutionizing the criminal justice system he oversees.
Sworn in as Dallas County district attorney on Jan. 1 — he is the first elected black district attorney in Texas — Watkins fired or accepted the resignations of almost two dozen high-level white prosecutors and began hiring minorities and women.
And in an unprecedented act for any jurisdiction in the nation, he announced he would allow the Texas affiliate of the Innocence Project to review hundreds of Dallas County cases dating back to 1970 to decide whether DNA tests should be conducted to validate past convictions.
Read the full story here. (Washington Post, 03/05/07)
DNA testing has proven the innocence of 13 wrongly convicted people in Dallas in the last five years. Wakins announced last month that his office will cooperate with the Innocence Project of Texas to review hundreds of cases in which a convicted person applied for testing and was denied. Read more about this groundbreaking move here.
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