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 have come to view this in part as a government spending issue. Sure it is a corruption issue, but the fact that we give prosecutors essentially an unlimited budget means they can go after whomever they want and take cases to trial to convict a guy they know is innocent. With tighter budgets DAs and judges might be more judicious.
The corrupt prosecutor obtained the conviction by withholding evidence from the defense which would have exonerated the defendant. Such as the kid saying it wasn’t his dad and the wife’s cards being used days after her murder. There are no real penalties when the police and prosecutors are caught doing this and many career rewards. Meanwhile, innocent people go through hell.
We have a moral obligation to society to purge the ground of certain evil elements. The death penalty does just that.
The so called death penalty system we have now is immoral, and an affront to civilization.
I would be very hesitant to convict solely on a confession.
Yes, they act like it’s just lost income that matters, and not the horrible environment, the danger to one’s life, the lost youth, the separation from one’s family, the outrage of the false conviction.
The richest man in the world cannot buy twenty-five years.
Hopefully Bradley, the DA, will run against the corrupt current judge in the next judicial election. He should be a shoo-in.
Cases like this are one of the reasons I changed my mind of the death penalty....Good thing he got life and not death. There have been several cases like this in the past 8 years after dna came into the forefront. He will be rich but cannot get those years back....plus overzealous prosecutors that have twisted the law or refused to even do trials lawfully, Another example of bad prosecutors is the Duke rape case. Railroading of political opponents etc..
Didn’t know that; so Bradley is a scumbag, too.
Maybe. I’m not saying not. Amanda Knox is also “innocent”.
DNA has become holier than the Eucharist for the Catholics. While credibility of eyewitnesses and police procedures are questioned, no one ever questions, I’ve noticed, credibility of the process of obtaining and testing the DNA. It is assumed to be perfect. Let’s not complicate things by suspecting that some technician in the lab has certain sympathies, or forgot to clean his test equipment.
Death penalty cases get far more scrutiny.
So 25 years of your life means nothing?
Check out the case of Hank Skinner. Perry's boys are fighting like heck to preclude DNA testing.
Did you notice that he didn’t get a death sentence?
Was he charged with capital murder?
Nice.
Nothing like knowingly prosecuting an innocent man.
Never, ever, trust any law enforcement officer.
Yeah, it does.
The dishonest DA who knowingly prosecuting an innocent man (and who knows how many others) is now a judge deciding the fate of everyone that comes into his courtroom.
You can also bet that this dishonest individual has turned a blind eye to every bit of prosecutorial misconduct he's encountered.
Just needs to be said, the DNA technologies were not available to law enforcement 25 years ago.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.