Texas disgrace

The issue of wrongful convictions is back in the spotlight this week, first on Monday when a local arson case was highlighted on a national news show, then on Tuesday as four men testified before Texas lawmakers about the years they spent in prison for crimes they didn't commit.

The legislative hearing focused on a package of bills that would help people who have been wrongfully convicted. The legislation is being pushed by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, who is the chairman of the board of the Innocence Project, a New York-based organization that works to free those who are wrongfully imprisoned. So far, 198 people have been exonerated nationwide, according to the Innocence Project. Texas leads the nation with 27 DNA exonerations.....

Speaking in favor of the legislation were four wrongfully convicted men who spent a total of nearly 50 years in prison. One of them was James Giles, who had been exonerated the day before. Before Monday's recommendation from a Dallas County prosecutor and a judge, he had spent 10 years in prison and 14 years on parole for a rape he did not commit.

Giles said he supports the boost in compensation for the wrongly convicted. He held up the blue sex offender registry card he carries in his wallet to show that, even though he's been out of prison, he sometimes struggled to find a job and has shouldered the burden of his conviction long enough. "It's something a person can never get back,'' Giles said. "Humiliation.''

Christopher Ochoa, who was wrongly convicted of murder in 1988 after he gave police a confession that he says was coerced during interrogation, also spoke. He said Texas, with its reputation as a law-and-order state, should take the lead in finding ways to avoid more wrongful convictions.

The issue of wrongful convictions is also being presented to a national audience this week. CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360 degrees news show is looking at several cases with claims of wrongful conviction, including one from Central Texas. The defendant in that case was Cameron Todd Willingham of Corsicana. Prosecutors said he set a 1991 fire which burned down his house, killing his three young daughters. Willingham maintained his innocence, however, even in the minutes leading up to his execution in February 2004.

Local attorney Walter M. Reaves Jr. believed in Willingham's innocence and tried to get his execution halted by presenting an updated analysis of the fire. The investigative techniques that officials relied on at the time have been shown to be "junk science," he said. Although the argument did not save Willingham, Reaves promised him just before his death that he would keep fighting to clear his name. That vow has resulted in Reaves testifying before state lawmakers and working with the Innocence Project on the case.

Reaves said he didn't know the case was going to be featured on the CNN show, but he added he is glad it continues to attract attention. Reaves noted that one of the people interviewed during the segment was John Lentini. He is considered one of the nation's leading fire investigators and heads up a panel of arson experts put together by the Innocence Project.

The group is trying to bring the issue of faulty fire science to light and have many old cases re-examined, Reaves said, especially because many people convicted in those cases remain in prison. In the past, Reaves has lamented that Willingham might not ever be cleared because fire science involves a certain amount of subjectivity, as opposed to other forensic tools, such as DNA. But now, Reaves said, he thinks a pretty airtight case can be made for Willingham's innocence using the opinions of Lentini's panel. "When you have all of the leading arson experts in the country reaching the same conclusion, it's pretty close to definitive," Reaves said.

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More on the Giles case:

Both the Dallas County District Attorney's office and Giles' Innocence Project lawyer, Vanessa Potkin, told the court they had evidence showing Giles was innocent of the 1982 gang rape of a Dallas woman. It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, said Assistant Dallas County District Attorney Lisa Smith.

A man who pleaded guilty to the gang rape, Stanley Bryant, implicated two other men in the crime: a James Giles and a Michael Brown. DNA evidence linked Brown and Bryant to the crime, Smith and Potkin said. Brown was never tried and died in prison after being convicted of another gang rape.

Police eventually arrested James Curtis Giles, who lived 25 miles away and did not match the description of the attacker given by the rape victim, Potkin said. Giles was about 10 years older and had gold teeth. Investigators ignored another man with a similar name: James Earl Giles. That Giles lived across the street from the victim and had previously been arrested with Brown on other charges, the attorneys said. He died in prison in 2000 while serving time for robbery and assault.

The victim recently acknowledged some doubt as to whether James Curtis Giles was among the rapists. One witness also recently identified the other man, James Earl Giles, in a photo lineup, Smith said.

The DNA evidence that linked Brown to the crime was one factor that helped convince the district attorney's office to investigate James Curtis Giles' claim of innocence, especially because of Brown's "overwhelming connection" to the other James Giles, Potkin said.

Giles, who is black, would be the 13th Dallas County man since 2001 exonerated by DNA evidence, the most of any county in the nation. It would be the third exoneration since District Attorney Craig Watkins took office on Jan. 1 pledging to free anyone wrongfully convicted. Watkins, the state's first black district attorney, took over an office with a history of racial discrimination, including a staff manual for prosecutors that described how to keep minorities off juries.

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