17th exoneration in Dallas county most in nation.

[RB TexLa]

Man set to be 17th exonerated by DNA in Dallas County

By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News
[e-mail]

Illegally withheld evidence probably caused a man who will be exonerated today to spend more time behind bars than anyone in the country cleared by DNA, the Dallas County district attorney's office and the Innocence Project of Texas said Monday.

James Lee Woodard is expected to be released today by state District Judge Mark Stoltz and become the 17th man exonerated by DNA in Dallas County, which has more DNA exonerations than any other county in the nation.

.....

Mr. Woodard, who has a record for nonviolent crimes, is the second man cleared by DNA during a review of 350 defendants' requests for DNA tests that were denied under previous District Attorney Bill Hill.

Like many in Dallas County exonerated by DNA, Mr. Woodard was convicted during the era of District Attorney Henry Wade. Current District Attorney Craig Watkins has repeatedly said he believes that during this time, prosecutors were more focused on convictions than justice.

In several handwritten letters, Mr. Woodard begged Mr. Wade to reinvestigate his case and always maintained his innocence. He said that his letters were always answered by a prosecutor saying nothing could be done because a jury convicted him.

In a March 1985 letter, Mr. Woodard wrote to Mr. Wade: "If you found out for yourself that I was innocent, would you let me go?"





http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/042908dnmetexoneration.ac1ea2cc.html

[bushmeister0]

1. I wonder how many if these cases slipped beneath the cracks when W. was Gov?

From what I hear, the guy he hired to read him the death penaly clemency petitions was none other than Boy-Gonzo, recently disgraced former AG.
Wonder how many of these types he put ot death?

The Dubya report:

"Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994, and selected Gonzales to be his chief counsel. During his tenure as chief counsel Gonzales prepared 57 death-penalty memoranda for Bush's review. Although the memos were intended to be confidential, Alan Berlow of The Atlantic magazine obtained copies after the Texas attorney-general ruled that they were not exempt from the Texas Public Information Act. The memos provide insight both into Gonzales view of the justice system, and on the relationship between Gonzales and Bush. . .

According to Berlow, the memos, mostly three to seven pages long, show a 'clear prosecutorial bias,' and 'seem to assume that if an appeals court rejected one or another of a defendant's claims, there is no conceivable rationale for the governor to revisit that claim.' This, Berlow noted, ignores the fact that the justice system sometimes makes mistakes . . .

Bush recounted in his autobiography A Charge to Keep, 'I don't believe my role is to replace the verdict of a jury with my own unless there are new facts or evidence of which a jury was unaware, or evidence that the trial was somehow unfair.'"

http://www.thedubyareport.com/gonzales1.html

The prisident isn't a fact-checker after all. He appoints people like Al Gonzales to do that, to make sure the "facts" don't get in the way of his Decidin'.