Morning Edition, May 5, 2008 · James Lee Woodard walked out of a Texas prison last week after 27 years behind bars. The state now agrees that Woodard was wrongfully convicted in 1981 of killing a girl he had been dating.
Woodard is the 17th man from Dallas to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Nearly all are black. And the district attorney's office is predicting that Woodard won't be the last. npr
8 comments:
i don't guess anyone is surprised that the legal justice in texas about black men sucks bites and blows...guilty by being black...
That's one of the reasons I'm against the death penalty. At least this guy gets the rest of his life back. Besides there are many countries that won't extradite murder suspects back to the U.S. because of our death penalty.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Dallas County has a lot of these DNA exonerations because our DA Craig Watkins has made a priority out of exonerating people who were wrongly convicted, but there are probably a lot more out there waiting for justice. Watkins thinks that they should start going after prosecutors for misconduct and even giving them jail time, which I think is an excellent idea.
I agree with you on the death penalty, there's just too much of a margin of error, especially in states like Texas that do a poor job of making sure that the accused have adequate legal representation. I also think that the government shouldn't be in the business of killing people when it's not necessary to do so, but if they're going to execut murderers, they should at least make 100% sure that the person being executed is guilty.
can he sue for wrongful conviction?
this has happened to a few guys in canada and they got millions.
I sure hope he can sue. That's a big chunk of someone's life. Agree on the death penalty. Too much room for error and it makes us no better than the criminal.
That scares me...it could happen to anyone.
They can and have sued for wrongful conviction. I don't have the numbers handy, but I read that wrongful convictions have already cost Texas millions of dollars.
big tex, we see eye to eye on this issue.
He should sue, I bet he does.
mcraven, i'm going to be more careful and stop leaving my DNA all over town!
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