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Texas high court confirms McGowan exoneration
Posted: June 11, 2008 5:15 pm
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals today granted habeas corpus relief to Innocence Project client Thomas McGowan, who was released in April after serving 23 years for a rape he didn’t commit. After DNA testing proved McGowan’s innocence, a Dallas judge decided that his conviction should be vacated and all charges against him should be dropped. Today, the CCA approved that ruling, and Mcgowan officially became the 218th person in the U.S. exonerated by DNA testing, the 15th in Dallas County, and the 32nd in Texas. Three other people have been proven innocent by DNA testing in Dallas, but they are waiting for their exonerations to become official.
Read more about McGowan’s case here.
Read about the other 14 DNA exonerations in Dallas County.
Tags: Thomas McGowan
Real perpetrator identified in Texas exoneration
Posted: June 18, 2008 3:53 pm
Innocence Project client Thomas McGowan was freed in April, but today his case is fully closed. Dallas County prosecutors announced last night that the DNA profile that proved McGowan’s innocence also led to the identity of the real perpetrator, a man named Kenneth Wayne Woodson, who is already serving in Texas prison for another crime.
When told that his DNA profile matched evidence from the 1985 rape, Woodson confessed to committing the crime, prosecutors said. Like many wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing, McGowan’s conviction not only sent an innocent man to prison but also allowed the perpetrator of a violent crime to evade arrest. Woodson was convicted of a separate rape in 1986 and sentenced to 30 years in prison. If he – and not McGowan – had been apprehended after the 1985 attack, the 1986 rape could have been prevented.
Woodson was paroled after 20 years, but was convicted of robbing a bank 14 months after his release. He was sent back to serve the remaining 10 years of his sentence. He will not be prosecuted for the 1985 rape, officials said, because the statute of limitations has expired.
The real perpetrator has been identified in 83 of the 218 DNA exoneration cases to date.
McGowan, who was officially exonerated last week by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, said this news brings full closure to his case.
McGowan said that with all of the publicity surrounding the new information in the case, he sympathizes with the victim. "I'll be praying for her," he said.
Regarding Woodson, McGowan said: "I feel sorry for the dude. I can't understand what was running through his mind. I'm amazed the dude got caught. I'm just glad the truth is out now."Read more about McGowan’s case here.
Read the full story here. (Associated Press, 06/17/08)
Tags: Thomas McGowan
Freeing the innocent and identifying true perpetrators
Posted: August 1, 2008 11:00 am
By Thomas McGowan, Texas Exoneree
Thomas McGowan served 23 years in Texas prison for a rape he didn’t commit. DNA exonerated him, and the real perpetrator was identified. Today on the Innocence Blog, McGowan writes about finding the person whose crime stole 23 years of his life. DNA testing has exonerated 218 wrongfully convicted people to date, and in nearly 40% of those cases, the actual perpetrator of the crime was subsequently identified.
I never saw Kenneth Wayne Woodson; I don’t know if he ever saw me. He went to prison a year later than I did. I’m glad he confessed, but I think the only reason he did is because of the DNA hit. If Woodson had been caught at first, then he wouldn’t have had time to assault anybody else. Now the word is out, even though he can’t be punished for this crime.
For years I was thinking, how could the witness make a mistake? Last week I learned that Woodson’s photo was in the same lineup that my photo was in. When she pointed to my picture she said she thought I was the perpetrator, but the police told her she had to say “yes” or “no.” The police pressured her and told her that she had to be sure. Everybody makes mistakes. I don’t hold anything against her.
Woodson is probably one of those people that just doesn’t care. I used to see guys like him sometimes. Guys like that get out of prison two or three times and then they come back. Six months later the same guy comes back and asks me: “Hey, you still here?” Those guys got two or three chances. I couldn’t get one chance and I was innocent. I think the hardest thing was when I came up for parole after doing 20 years. I had two life sentences stacked. I was looking to make it out of there alive. But they weren’t going to let me out. I used to pray to God, “Please, if nothing else, I don’t want to die in prison. I don’t want to go to my grave with my family and friends thinking I did a crime like this.”
DNA is the truth. In my case, we also have a man that confessed that he did the crime. You can’t get the truth any better than that. I served Woodson’s time for him. Ain’t no telling what else he did. I don’t even know what I would say to the dude other than, “It was your fault.” I know everyone can change, but he might be one of those men who finds it real hard to change. People have got to want to do the right thing. For a while, I thought the whole world was crazed and lost. But I can see now that there are still good people in the world.
Lots of other things are coming into focus now, too. Having a job would make me feel like I have a full life. I would like a job where I can work with people, like at a nursing home or a hospital. It’s just a matter of time until somebody feels like they want to give me a chance. Since three months ago when all of this started happening, it keeps getting better and better. That’s really what I’m working towards. I’m trying to have a life.
Tags: Texas, Thomas McGowan
Sunday morning – CBS examines life after exoneration
Posted: September 26, 2008 3:19 pm
A feature on “CBS News Sunday Morning” this week will examine the difficult the difficult adjustment faced by the men and women who are proven innocent and freed from prison after serving decades for crimes they didn’t commit.
Interviewed on the program will be Innocence Project clients Thomas McGowan (who served 23 years in Texas for a rape he didn’t commit) and Larry Peterson (who served 16 years in New Jersey for a murder he didn’t commit). Also featured will be Beverly Monroe, who was released in 2002 after serving 10 years for a murder she didn’t commit, and her daughter, Katie Monroe, the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center. Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld will discuss the broader issues people face after they are exonerated and the government’s obligation to provide financial compensation and social services.
Find out when the show airs in your city.
Read more about life after exoneration.
Tags: Thomas McGowan, Larry Peterson, Exoneree Compensation, Life After Exoneration
Dallas Editorial Calls on Police to Reform Procedures
Posted: October 28, 2008 2:35 pm
DNA exonerations have revealed that flaws in police procedures – like the way photos are shown to witnesses – have led to wrongful convictions. An editorial in today’s Dallas Morning News calls for state oversight of police procedures to ensure that the innocent aren’t sent to prison.
The editorial singles out Richardson, Texas, Police Chief Larry Zacharias, whose department showed a flawed photo lineup to the victim of a rape in 1985. She picked Thomas McGowan and he was convicted. Twenty-two years later, DNA testing exonerated him.
On Thursday, Zacharias will testify about his department’s reform efforts before the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit, one of only seven innocence commissions in the nation.
Zacharias lays it on the line: Law enforcement professionals have an "ethical obligation" to upgrade procedures when justice hangs in the balance.
Amen.
His department learned the lesson a tough way. In 1985, the Richardson PD produced a rape suspect for prosecutors based on a lineup of photos shown to the victim. She picked out a 26-year-old man who was later convicted and sent to prison.
There Thomas McGowan Jr. sat for 22 years, until DNA tests sought by the Innocence Project of New York exonerated him this spring. Read the full editorial here. (Dallas Morning News, 10/28/2008)
Tags: Thomas McGowan
After Exoneration
Posted: April 20, 2009 3:52 pm
When wrongfully convicted individuals are cleared and released, the media and the public usually takes notice of the injustice they suffered. On the day of their release, promises of help pour in. But in the months and years after exoneration, the attention fades. Exonerees struggle to rebuild lives interrupted by injustice, sometimes without the support of family or friends.
The lead story yesterday on CBS News “Sunday Morning” explores life after exoneration and the difficulties faced by the wrongfully convicted.
“The minute you’re falsely accused, your life is gone,” says Beverly Monroe in the CBS piece. “Your life as you know it will never be the same. You lose everything that you had in a normal life. For me it was house, job, career, income, separation from my family. You lose all of those normal basics.”
Monroe served eight years in prison before she was cleared, and was 62 years old when she was released.
In addition to Beverly Monroe’s case, the CBS report visits the cases of Innocence Project clients Larry Peterson and Thomas McGowan.
Watch the full CBS video here.
Tags: Thomas McGowan, Larry Peterson, Life After Exoneration
One Year Out and Counting: Thomas McGowan Just Wants To Help Others
Posted: June 11, 2009 11:16 am
One year ago today, Thomas McGowan was officially exonerated in Texas after serving 23 years in prison for a rape and burglary he didn’t commit. The Innocence Project, which represented McGowan, obtained DNA testing in his case in 2008. The results proved that another person had committed the sexual assault for which McGowan had served more than two decades in prison.
Above, left to right, Texas exonerees James Giles, Thomas McGowan, James Waller and Charles Chatman.
After his release, McGowan spoke with CBS News about what it felt like to be a free man. He said: "It's the best high. It is. New life… It feels good to go down the street, I am not there at a place with barbed wire, and fences.” He was amazed by how much had changed since he had gone to prison, and remarked that “everything is new, a whole new world."
In a blog he wrote on the Innocence Project’s website after his exoneration, McGowan stated that he wanted to obtain a job because it would make him feel that “he had a full life.” He said he hoped to get a position where he could help people, like at a nursing home or a hospital.
McGowan had also built close ties with fellow exonerees in Texas. He meets twice a month with others freed in Texas after serving years for crimes they didn’t commit, to “hang out and talk” and provide support for one another.
Two weeks ago, McGowan and the rest of the group appeared at the courthouse to greet and offer assistance to the newest Dallas county exoneree, Jerry Lee Evans.
Tags: Thomas McGowan
New Texas Compensation Law Takes Effect
Posted: September 4, 2009 1:10 pm
A new state law takes effect in Texas this week compensating the exonerated with $80,000 for each year they spent in prison. The bill also includes services such as job training, tuition credits and access to medical and dental treatment, and it compensates the exonerated both for time spent in prison and for time on parole (at a rate of $25,000 per year). Although Texas is one of 27 states with an exoneree compensation law, no other state provides this level of social services or compensates the exonerated for years on parole (often as registered sex offenders).
Thomas McGowan, who met recently with the victim in his case who misidentified him and the lead officer in the investigation, said he is looking forward to receiving compensation to help him rebuild his life.
"I'm nervous and excited," said McGowan, 50. "It's something I never had, this amount of money. I didn't have any money — period."
Read the full story. (Associated Press, 9/4/09)
Tags: Thomas McGowan, Exoneree Compensation
Police Chiefs and Wrongful Convictions
Posted: October 6, 2009 2:13 pm
Innocence Project client Thomas McGowan (above left) is set to speak about the role of eyewitness misidentification in his wrongful conviction this afternoon at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference in Denver. McGowan will be joined on a panel by the victim in the case for which he was wrongfully convicted, and Mike Corley (above right), the Texas police officer who originally investigated the crime.
We wrote about this unique partnership of crime victim, officer and exoneree recently, and the three will tell their stories today at a conference with more than 15,000 law enforcement leaders.
Wrongful convictions are a prominent issue at this year’s IACP conference – Rob Warden, the executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law – presented Sunday at a panel on the causes of wrongful conviction. He was joined by Center on Wrongful Convictions Legal Director Steven Drizin and former U.S. Attorney Thomas P. Sullivan. Innocence Project Policy Director Stephen Saloom is also attending the conference.
Dallas Morning News reporter Tanya Eiserer is blogging from the conference this week on the DMN Crime Blog.
Tags: Thomas McGowan
Wrongful Convictions and Police Chiefs, Part II
Posted: October 7, 2009 6:20 pm
Innocence Project client Thomas McGowan spoke yesterday on a panel at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference in Denver. He was joined by the victim of the crime for which he was wrongfully convicted and the original investigating officer, Mike Corley, who is now the Assistant Chief of the Richardson, Texas, Police Department.
The Dallas Morning News Crime Blog covered the panel here.
Read about McGowan’s recent meeting with Corley and the crime victim here.
Also speaking at the event was Darryl Hunt, who spent nearly 19 years in North Carolina prisons for a murder he didn’t commit before he was exonerated through DNA testing. Joining Hunt were his attorney, Mark Rabil, Winston-Salem Police Sgt. Chuck Byrom and North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence Director Christine Mumma. Read more about Hunt's case here.
Tags: Darryl Hunt, Thomas McGowan
Police Chiefs Recognize Importance of Eyewitness Identification Reform
Posted: October 14, 2009 4:45 pm
The latest issue of Police Chief Magazine features an article on the importance of eyewitness identification reform. “Eyewitness Identification: Views from the Trenches” chronicles the experiences of four law enforcement officers, and how each of them came to discover the need for reform.
One of the article’s four co-authors is Mike Corley, assistant chief for the Richardson Police Department in Texas. Corley was the lead investigator in the case of Thomas McGowan, a Texas exoneree who was released in April 2008 when DNA testing proved McGowan’s innocence of a 1985 burglary and aggravated sexual assault.
Corley wrote that despite his confidence in the eyewitness' identification of McGowan as her attacker and his supervisor's confidence in his work, realizing that McGowan was wrongly imprisoned for 23 years was "was like being kicked in the stomach." Despite the mistakes made, however, Corley stresses the importance of reform to prevent them from happening again:
"My point in making this example is simply to say that it can happen to any witness and any police department. As leaders, we must challenge ourselves and our subordinates to use the best procedures. The consequences are too high."Read more about how Assistant Police Chief Corley, Exoneree Thomas McGowan and the victim in the case are working together to raise awareness about eyewitness misidentifications.
Read the full story here. (Police Chief Magazine, 10/1/09)
Tags: Texas, Thomas McGowan
After Two Years, a Texas Exoneree is Home
Posted: June 11, 2010 4:06 pm
McGowan is one of 20 men to be exonerated in Dallas County since 2001, the most exonerations in a single county in the U.S.. While in prison, McGowan sought out the assistance of the Innocence Project, which in turn collaborated with the Dallas District Attorney’s recently established Conviction Integrity Unit to secure a DNA test of the biological evidence collected at the time of the crime. The DNA tests not only confirmed McGowan’s innocence, but identified the true perpetrator, a convicted rapist who was in the original photo lineup from which the victim misidentified McGowan in the first place. In 111 DNA exoneration cases, the real perpetrator has also been identified.
Post-conviction DNA testing is critical in cases like McGowan’s because it serves not only to exonerate the innocent but also to identify the guilty. “A person wrongfully convicted is a victim, and the person who did it is still out there,” Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins said recently.
Read more about McGowan’s case, and learn about reforms to address eyewitness misidentifications.
Tags: Thomas McGowan
Fingerprint Could Clear Dallas Man
Posted: July 15, 2010 3:39 pm
The Richardson, Texas, police knew about an unknown fingerprint from the crime scene at the time, but still focused their investigation on Brodie. While Brodie was in prison, Richardson police discovered that the fingerprint on the victim’s window (the perpetrator’s point of entry), matched a man suspected in a string of similar sexual assaults. Brodie fought the conviction on the grounds of the fingerprint, but a judge denied his appeal in 1994, saying the confession outweighed the print.
If Brodie is freed, he would be the second person cleared in Richardson in two years based on evidence of innocence. Innocence Project client Thomas McGowan was wrongfully convicted in Richardson in 1986. He served 23 years before DNA tests on crime scene evidence proved his innocence and led to his exoneration. His wrongful conviction rested largely on the victim’s identification, given after a suggestive identification procedure.
Tags: Thomas McGowan, Fingerprints