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Texas prosecutors reflect on their role in wrongful convictions
Posted: June 9, 2008 12:05 pm
A groundbreaking article in this week’s issue of Texas Lawyer tells of a dozen Dallas exonerations through the eyes of the trial prosecutors. Their reflections on these cases represent a range of perspectives, but common themes emerge. There is consensus that eyewitness identification is unreliable on its own and that cases resting on a single eyewitness are a recipe for wrongful conviction. Prosecutors agree that forensic science has improved the quality of justice in American courtrooms. Many prosecutors remembered every detail of these convictions years later, and worked for the defendant’s release soon after learning of new DNA evidence proving innocence.
Prosecutors call these wrongful convictions “tragic” and one says that hindsight is 20-20.
"I don't fault anyone for doing what they're doing," Prosecutor Douglas Fletcher says. "But you can look back on any profession. Doctors can look back at doctors 30 years ago and say . . . "Why were they treating cancer that way?'"Another prosecutor, James Fry, says the unreliable nature of eyewitness identifications has been exposed by these exonerations.
… "In the criminal justice system, people are being convicted on one-witness cases. And what this says to me is we've got an inherent problem about how many of these cases we're getting wrong. And it's still going on today," says James Fry, a former Dallas prosecutor who helped send a man to prison for 27 years for a crime he didn't commit. "My question to everybody involved in this across the state and across the nation is what are we going to do about this? I don't know."Read the full story here. (Texas Lawyer, 06/06/08)
Tags: Charles Chatman, Wiley Fountain, Larry Fuller, James Giles, Donald Wayne Good, Andrew Gossett, Billy Wayne Miller, David Shawn Pope, James Waller, Gregory Wallis, Eyewitness Identification, Eyewitness Misidentification
U.S. Congresswoman to hold panel on wrongful convictions and DNA exonerations in Dallas tomorrow
Posted: July 18, 2008 1:00 pm
U.S. Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas) will host panel discussions tomorrow in Dallas on wrongful convictions and DNA exonerations. The first panel will feature Texas exonerees James Woodard, Charles Chatman, and Billy Smith and the second will feature U.S. Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan), Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis (who also chairs the Innocence Project’s Board of Directors), Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins and Jeff Blackburn of the Innocence Project of Texas.
Dallas County has had 19 wrongful convictions exonerated by DNA evidence, second in the nation only to Cook County, Illinois. The state of Texas as a whole leads the nation with 32 DNA exonerations.
Read the press release on the Innocence Project of Texas blog.
Tags: Texas, Charles Chatman, Billy James Smith, Innocence Commissions
Dallas panel "brings us closer to justice"
Posted: July 21, 2008 1:10 pm
At a panel discussion in Texas on Saturday, federal and state lawmakers joined with attorneys and exonerees to discuss wrongful convictions and the criminal justice reforms that could prevent future injustice.
U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the event’s organizer, said "there is perhaps no greater failure in our democracy and our justice system than the conviction and incarceration of those who have been wrongfully accused." But U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) also spoke on the panel and expressed optimism that progress was being made. "More and more people are beginning to hear about this problem," he said.
Patrick Waller, who recently became the 19th person cleared by DNA testing in Dallas County, attended the event, along with exonerees Charles Chatman and Billy James Smith.
"The most difficult thing is when I have to tell people I was in prison and what happened to me. And then the next difficult thing is when they ask me if I'm getting compensation, like if that was the most important thing," Smith said. "The most important thing is to be stable and to be able to function."
Read the full story here. (Dallas Morning News, 07/20/08)
Tags: Charles Chatman, Billy James Smith
Still Shackled
Posted: January 12, 2009 1:30 pm
Charles Chatman served 27 years in Texas before he was exonerated last year based on DNA evidence proving his innocence. He was 21 years old when he was wrongfully convicted and 48 when released. He’s been free for a year now, but he recently told NBC that he has struggled to adjust to life on the outside and feels held back by the gaping hole in his life.
Though DNA proved his innocence, Chatman says he still feels shackled at times. He has been unsuccessful at finding jobs. He takes newspaper clippings with him to interviews to explain where he's been for more than a quarter of a century.Many exonerees struggle to adjust to life outside of prison after spending years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. No state offers any immediate assistance to the exonerated, and only 25 states (and the federal government) have laws compensating the wrongfully convicted. Learn more about compensations laws and life after exoneration here.
Though people seem sympathetic to his situation, they still won't hire him.
"They apologize because they can't give me the job," Chatman said. "I don't have a work history, I don't have work references, and anything that I knew how to do before I went in, I haven't been able to do in 27 years."
Read the full story here. (MSNBC, 01/12/08)
Chatman was a client of the Innocence Project of Texas, visit their website here.
Tags: Charles Chatman
Struggling to Be Free
Posted: January 28, 2009 5:50 pm
A story on the front page of today’s USA Today examines the lives of exonerees after release, when not even conclusive proof of innocence can completely wash away the stigma of being in prison for decades.
Charles Chatman, 48, a Dallas-area man freed last year after 26 years in prison, tells of his "shame" in dealing with family members, many of them women, after his wrongful conviction — and even his exoneration — for aggravated rape.Learn more about the issues exonerees face after release here.
Other exonerees, such as Jerry Miller, 50, of suburban Chicago, carry court papers as commonly as driver's licenses to prove to potential employers and others that their convictions were overturned. Miller was convicted in the 1981 rape and kidnapping of a Chicago woman and spent 24 years in prison. He finished his sentence before being exonerated. In 2007, a year after his parole, he was cleared by DNA testing of the victim's clothes.
Illinois officials required him to register as a sex offender and attend counseling after his release but before his exoneration.
"My picture was on the Internet," he says of the required photo on the public sex offender registry. "I thought prison was bad. But (outside) I was like the scum of the earth." Illinois officials have since removed him from the state's database.
Read the full story here – and join the conversation going on in USA Today’s comments section.
Tags: Johnny Briscoe, Charles Chatman, Jerry Miller
Tune-In: BET Series "Vindicated" Profiles Eight Exonerees
Posted: December 3, 2012 4:25 pm
Tags: Herman Atkins, Charles Chatman, Timothy Cole, Thomas Haynesworth, Darryl Hunt