"Texas students in innocence projects play key role in exonerations," by Dave Montgomery appeared in Tuesday's Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
For years, James Woodard wrote letter after letter from his prison cell, hoping to convince anyone willing to listen that he was innocent.
Most of his pleas were ignored, but some weren't. Among those who took an interest was Alexis Hoff, a student at Texas Wesleyan School of Law in Fort Worth.
In 2007, Hoff, now Alexis Hoff Allen, was a member of the Wesleyan Innocence Project, composed of law student volunteers who spend hours of their own time investigating possible wrongful convictions.
Working with the Dallas County public defender's office and district attorney's office, the 25-year-old student pored over court records, transcripts and other documents in an exhaustive re-examination of the case. Allen's review ultimately helped lead to DNA testing that cleared Woodard in the 1981 slaying of his girlfriend.
"She was a godsend for me," said Woodard, who walked out of prison in 2008 after spending 27 years behind bars and now lives in Dallas. "I absolutely love her."
Although their efforts don't always yield success stories like Woodard's, innocence projects on university campuses have become a powerful force in the criminal justice system. The work of student volunteers has figured heavily in many of the 42 exonerations in Texas -- the most in the nation -- and helped clear Tim Cole of Fort Worth, who died in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault.
"They are extremely essential," said attorney Michelle Moore of the Dallas County public defender's office, who credits Wesleyan law students for assisting in many of the DNA-based reversals in Dallas County. "They've been very instrumental from the start."
Typically guided by professional advisers, students plow through old court records and police files, interview witnesses and prisoners, and sometimes spend days on the road looking for inconsistencies and evidence that might suggest a wrongful conviction. It's shoe-leather detective work that often takes students through cold cases that perhaps all but the inmate have long since forgotten.
Erin Mulvaney's report, "The Price of Innocence," appeared last week at the Texas Tribune.
Christopher Scott and Claude Simmons were released from prison on Oct. 23, 2009, after serving 13 years for a murder they didn’t commit.
But the euphoria of freedom quickly gave way to panic: How would they make their way as free men with little but jail time on their resumes? A state law designed to help exonerees readjust would help, but only after they untangled reels of red tape to get their due compensation, clear their criminal records and find employment, housing and identification.
“It felt so pitiful just being let out of prison and feeling like you have to fend for yourself,” says Scott, who is 39. “You can only rely on your family members so much.”
Simmons and Scott were two of the first exonerees to be eligible for the benefits of legislation that Gov. Rick Perry signed into law in 2009. The Timothy Cole Act, named for a posthumously exonerated inmate, increased the financial compensation for Texas exonerees from $50,000 to $80,000 for each year they were wrongfully imprisoned. It also provides a monthly payment from that lump sum to act as a steady source of income and an initial payment of up to $10,000 to help exonerees get established right after their release. The legislation “was a great step,” says Michelle Moore, a public defender in the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office. “They just didn’t give thought to how it would be handled.”
Simmons and Scott couldn’t agree more. The two men were convicted of capital murder in a 1997 shooting death linked to a Dallas-area home-invasion robbery after being misidentified as the assailants by an eyewitness: the victim's wife. The University of Texas at Arlington Innocence Network and the Actual Innocence Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin worked on the case for years and eventually built a case to help exonerate them.
The trouble started soon after they got out. First, they struggled to collect the $10,000 the Legislature had promised to help with their reintegration process. Then they were unable to collect non-monetary benefits like clothes, money and temporary housing, which are available to paroled prisoners but not to those who never committed a crime in the first place. They finally received their compensation checks last week — six months after being freed.
“Exonerees aren’t given a dime when they leave prison. Many don’t have a place to lay their heads at night,” says University of Texas at Arlington Exoneree Project Director Jaimie Page, who helped get Scott and Simmons identification and other staples after their release. “If they have no family — and many do not — they are essentially homeless.”
Related posts are in the exoneration and innocence indexes.
Comments