Posted on 10/12/2011 4:28:38 PM PDT by posterchild
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas appeals court on Wednesday formally exonerated a man who spent nearly 25 years in prison for his wife's 1986 fatal beating, reaffirming a judge's decision to set him free last week after DNA tests linked the killing to another man.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared Michael Morton innocent of killing his wife, Christine, and made him eligible to receive $80,000 from the state for each year of confinement, or about $2 million total.
Morton, 57, was convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence and sentenced to life in prison. He maintained over the years that his wife and their 3-year-old son were fine when he left for work at an Austin grocery store on the day she was killed, and that an intruder must have attacked her.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I cannot imagine a greater hell than to have your wife and child murder and be falsely convicted of the crime.
I hope he has a forgiving heart for his own sake.
True, he’ll have to be very strong to get past all that he lost; family, time, and perhaps friends who believed his guilt.
It sounds as thought the son must be alive.
25 years. Bet that air smells good.
This is why I don’t support the death penalty.
Innocent man locked up, tried, convicted, on police and judicial fraud is what it looks like. I cannot endorse the innocence project because it has no desire to address the actual problem. Corrupt police and judges. You take these on and you’ve got a winner ‘innocence project’. If not, ...
“The Innocence Project has accused the prosecutor who originally handled the case, Ken Anderson, of deliberately concealing non-DNA evidence that likely would have helped Morton avoid being convicted in the first place. Anderson, who is now a district judge in Williamson County, has not responded to repeated requests for comment made through his court administrator.
Morrison said the defense is working with Bradley’s office to investigate allegations of prosecutorial wrongdoing, and will continue to do so over the next month. Among the evidence the Innocence Project says Anderson kept from Morton’s defense lawyers were statements Christine Morton’s mother made to police, in which she said her grandson told her he watched his mother get killed and that it wasn’t his father who killed her.”
The above is quoted from the article. If this is true, the former Prosecutor, Ken Anderson, now a Judge, should be disbarred and imprisoned for at least 25 years.
I support the death penalty when there is ample evidence...like matching DNA, recorded video, and or a confession.
and the “Prosecutor” prevented the bandana from being DNA tested for 5 years.
he also kept hidden that the wife’s credit card and checkbook were used days after the murder, by the real murderer.
...yet the people who deliberately interfered with justice
(isn’t that a crime ?)
suffer no penalty whatsoever.
the man suffers. and innocent taxpayers have to fork out 2 million. but the Prosecutor, and others who helped to keep an innocent man in jail, won’t be disbarred, or suffer any penalty.
Did you notice that he didn’t get a death sentence?
So who did it?
Yes, but others did and there are many Mike Nifong types out there.
It should be about a million dollars per year of false incarceration, not eighty grand...
I support the death penalty when there is ample evidence...like matching DNA, recorded video, and or a confession.Here is a case where a man is currently serving a life sentence for rape, based at least in part on the fact that the State of Florida mislabeled the DNA used for the test.
It turns out that the DNA claimed to belong to the defendant really belonged to the woman's boyfriend.
I haven't followed the case, so I don't know how strong the rest of the case was, but this is a clear reminder that even things like DNA can be wrong or misleading because of the possibility of human error.
/.02
Yes, if the ONLY bit of evidence there is/was some nebulous or non-conclusive element, let the person go free. And prosecute the bastards that used such "evidence". Why should the citizens be on the hook for crappy investigative work.
My only question is how did they get a conviction in the first place, knowing what we know now? In the case of Mumia, forget the DNA. There's no question he was the perp. The LACK of DNA doesn't mean that the killer wasn't there.
If half of this is true, $2 Million is not nearly enough. He should sue the state into oblivion and sue the prosecutor personally in civil court.
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