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| Timothy Cole |
The Houston Chronicle has produced a remarkable interactive feature on Texas exonerees titled "
A Human Tragedy," with photos and interviews of 24 Texas exonerees - some famous, others relatively obscure, but all having endured extraordinary and heart-wrenching personal journeys. Go
here to access interviews with each of them, and
here's the feature article accompanying the multimedia project, highlighting the cases of Michael Morton, Tim Cole, Joyce Ann Brown and James Giles. Great work by reporter Tony Freemantle, photographer Billy Smith II, who explained the motivation behind the project in a
brief Q&A: "I just felt that the first sound bite when they first get out of court
wasn’t enough. We’re trying to figure out how they’re doing, where’s
their life going. All of them are different. You have some that want to
change the system so that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. But then
there are some that move out into the country and, you know, live by
themselves and don’t get along with other human beings. I mean they’ve
been caged up like an animal and never had any privacy and now they want
all the privacy they can get." Fascinating stuff. Kudos to Chronicle editors for putting the project together.
But how does Texas fare against other states? It's terrible that anyone who is innocent has to languish so long behind bars before thier innocence is accepted by the courts, but I do wonder if it is the same across most American states or whether Texas is particularly bad at sending innocents to prison.
ReplyDeleteThe Exoneration Registry can answer those questions. Go to http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx
ReplyDeleteSW/Petra, I'm not sure the exoneration registry can tell us that, at least yet. DNA exonerations are rare - only 10% of violent crimes have biological evidence at all, meaning false convictions in the other 90% typically couldn't be uncovered by that method.
ReplyDeletePlus, where DNA evidence existed, in older cases it often wasn't saved. For example, the main reason Dallas has more DNA exonerations elsewhere is because their lab saved old evidence to re-test. The fact that San Antonio, Forth Worth, Austin, Houston, etc., didn't doesn't prove there weren't as many false convictions there, it just means they cannot be similarly rectified. And non-DNA exonerations are even rarer and more difficult to achieve under state habeas law.
My own sense is that Texas in the past has engaged more aggressively in some of the tactics that cause false convictions, but I don't think that exoneration registry is yet complete or robust enough to make those sort of comparative judgments based solely on that data.
Thanks for sharing my project, I really appreciate
ReplyDeleteit. You can also check out my blog where in the weeks to come I will be giving the story behind each portrait
http://blog.chron.com/depthoffield/2013/01/a-human-tragedy/
Our judicial system is in sure need of an overhaul and all of these people are just a symptom of how bad our system has become.4.3 million in jail or in prison in america is unacceptable as these exonerees.
ReplyDeleteNice work Grits, as usual!.
ReplyDeleteYea, police and prosicutors shouldn't frame innocent people because they want to move up in the system and they are inherently unbalnced people. Oh well, welcome to judicial corruption in America, you know - the land of the free.
ReplyDelete