Innocence summit drew officials, opinion leaders from around the state

I attended this afternoon an interesting "summit" on innocence and wrongful convictions in the Senate chamber at the Texas capitol. (UPDATE: See Part Two)

I was a bit annoyed when I was told bloggers couldn't go onto the Senate floor because we're not real journalists, so I didn't get to take the photos I'd hope to get. (That crap really needs to change next session - in all modesty, this blog reports circles around some of the reporters who had credentials to get on the floor.) But even from my perch in the gallery, the discussion was awfully interesting.

Nine exonerated men were on the dais along with Senators Rodney Ellis, John Whtimre, Bob Deuell, and other notables. There were reps from the criminal defense lawyers and the prosecutors lobby, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, the Innocence Project of Texas, the Governor's office, two judges from the Court of Criminal Appeals, several members of the House of Representatives, a police union rep, and several DAs and police chiefs, mostly from larger cities.

I was particularly impressed with commentary from James Lee Woodard, a writ writer who spent his entire 27 years wrongfully incarcerated trying to get courts to hear his innocence claims. He suggested that judges needed to look at prisoner writs with a more open mind, and that "jail mail" shouldn't just be dismissed out of hand. Quite a few folks in the room were people who Woodard had personally written about his plight but from whom he never heard a response.

Alejandro Herndandez, an innocent man who spent 13 years for a crime he didn't commit in El Paso, emphasized that in most cases no DNA existed to be tested, and that efforts to discover "innocence" needs to look beyond those cases with available DNA, which are increasingly few and far between.

Hernandez also echoed a call from Brandon Moon, another writ writer freed after 17 years incarcerated for a rape he didn't commit, also from El Paso. Three years ago Moon told a Senate committee that prisoners needed greater access to public records via open records requests in order to get a chance to prove their innocence. Legislators have balked in the past for fear open records requests wold be abused, but denying information to actually innocent inmates clearly inhibits their ability to prove up their defense.

Finally, Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Barbara Hervey said she intends to request more money during the next legislative session to pay for grants for innocence related trainings, and to my surprise declared the court is interested in pursuing either statutory or court-ordered changes in eyewitness ID methodologies, which account for the lion's share of wrongful convictions identified through DNA testing. She also wants an inspection team created to do surprise visits to state and local crimes labs to root out ongoing problems with shoddy forensic science.

I was encouraged so many opinion leaders were there from across the political spectrum, and representing a wide array of interests that are frequently at odds. There is room for consensus on some of these questions, if participants coming at the topic from different angles can each set aside their parochialism and actually look for solutions instead of ways to block them.

UPDATE: See more coverage from AP , The Houston Chronicle, and the Fort Worth Star Telegram.

BLOGVERSATION: Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice is offended on my behalf that Texas bloggers don't qualify for capitol press passes, lamenting "the fact that he types articles that never kill trees renders him less important than the kid from the Podunk Gazette, readership 278." (For the record, according to SiteMeter, Grits had just over 62,000 visitors last month, averaging more than 2,000 visitors per day.) Muchas gracias, Scott, for the supportive commentary.