The Exoneration Front

It appears that Dallas County's 19th DNA exoneration is in the works.  Tiara Ellis reports, "Dallas man one step closer to freedom after DNA clears him in 1981 rape," in the Dallas Morning News.

While a 28-year-old woman was being raped at White Rock Lake in August 1981, Johnnie Earl Lindsey was at work, pressing pants at a commercial laundry business, he has said.

But Mr. Lindsey, who is now 56, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. After nearly 26 years there, the Dallas man is one step closer to freedom this week after DNA test results showed that he was not the man who sexually assaulted the woman, said his attorney, Michelle Moore.

A court hearing is scheduled Friday at the Frank Crowley Courts Building.    

"Hopefully he'll be released," said Ms. Moore, an assistant Dallas County public defender and a board member of the Innocence Project, a legal group that seeks to get wrongful convictions overturned.

Dallas County District Attorney spokeswoman Jamille Bradfield confirmed the hearing date but said she could not comment further until later this week. If released, Mr. Lindsey would be the 19th man cleared by DNA testing in Dallas County since 2001, when the state Legislature began allowing post-conviction DNA testing.

The rape victim, who is not being identified because of The Dallas Morning News' policy not to name victims of sexual assault, pointed out Mr. Lindsey's picture in a six-person photo lineup that Dallas police mailed to her one year after the attack. She was living in San Antonio at the time, according to court records.

The suspect had been described as a black man in his 20s wearing no shirt, according to court records. Only two men in the lineup photos were shirtless, Ms. Moore said. And Mr. Lindsey was one of them.

"Juries back in the day believed that when a woman was raped, she must be able to identify her attacker," Ms. Moore said. "We know so much more now. There have been so many studies about how bad eyewitness accounts can be."

The Dallas Morning News also reports, "Collin County court dismisses murder charge in Ashley Estell case," by Wendy Hundley.  This formal action makes Michael Blair the ninth individual to be exonerated from Texas death row.

A Collin County court has dismissed the capital murder case that put Michael Blair on death row for the 1993 killing of Ashley Estell.

The ruling marks an end to more than a decade of legal appeals, but it does not end the search to find out who lured the 7-year-old girl from a Plano park and strangled her.

The Collin County District Attorney's Office and the Plano Police Department are reinvestigating the 15-year-old case that prompted a series of legal reforms known as Ashley's Laws.

In an Aug. 25 motion to dismiss, the district attorney noted the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had overturned Mr. Blair's 1994 conviction because new DNA testing had undermined certain evidence presented in the trial.

"It has been determined that this case should be dismissed in the interest of justice so that the offense charged in the indictment can be further investigated," according to the motion that was granted by state District Judge Greg Brewer.

More on Dallas County's exonerations begins here.  My commentary on the Michael Blair fiasco is here; earlier coverage begins at this link.