James Lee Woodard walked out of a Texas prison last week after 27 years behind bars. The state now agrees that Woodard was wrongfully convicted in 1981 of killing a girl he had been dating.
Woodard is the 17th man from Dallas to be exonerated by DNA evidence. Nearly all are black. And the district attorney’s office is predicting that Woodard won’t be the last.
Woodard had been dating 21-year-old Beverly Ann Jones for seven months before she was raped and murdered. It was Christmastime 1980, and, although the young woman had no idea, her time was running out.
“She told me that she was going to spend the weekend with her mother and take her mother some Christmas presents. She was sitting in the bathtub when I left,” Woodard recalls.
Listen to or read it all and check the links to letters he wrtoe while in prison.
I heard this story this morning and wondered about Mr. Woodard’s faith because he’s so upbeat and not bitter. I would have liked to hear why he has such a good attitude.
Texas has a particularly bad reputation for false imprisonment and a particular thirst for the death penalty. That’s probably a good idea with the amount of prosecutorial & police abuse. Of course, you know, the prosecutors are immune from any liability civil or criminal. Until that ends, we will keep hearing these stories. They have no motive to take care. We saw it with the Duke case.
Remember this man was convicted “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Don’t tell me about how wonderful the U.S. Death Penalty is.
At least give Dallas a little credit for maintaining the DNA evidence. That is the one bright spot in this whole travesty of Justice. Personally, I think that Mr. Woodward shoul dhave legal recourse against the City or County of Dallas for prosecutorial mis-conduct. While the DA can’t be held personally liable (I don’t think), the County should be.
While I think that we have one of the best criminal justice systems in the world, we still have major issues and problems. Given the amount of problems with wrongful convictions, I think we should commute everyone’s sentence in Texas who is on Death Row unless their conviction has been confirmed by DNA evidence.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
In most states, if you’re wrongfully imprisoned, you have no remedy except to go to the state legislature and beg for some money. We should change that.
If you are exonerated (i.e., found factually innocent), the state should do at least four things for you.
First, provide a certificate of exoneration making crystal clear to any prospective employer or landlord that your conviction and imprisonment were wrongful and should not be held against you.
Second, pay for a highly competent counseling to help you handle life on the outside, plus academic or vocational education.
Third, automatically pay you for the time you spent behind bars. Money can’t undo the damage, but it can at least help you start a new life. I don’t know what the right amount is, but let’s start with minimum wage for each hour you were behind bars.
Fourth, if you were imprisoned for many years, the state should enroll you in the state employees’ retirement system and make a large enough contribution to the system so that you will have the same retirement benefits as someone worked as a (regular) state employee for the same number of years.
“Of course, you know, the prosecutors are immune from any liability civil or criminal”
In cases like this, the original prosecutors too often seem immune to remorse or even serious second thoughts.
I thank God that the DNA tool is now available so that fewer cases like this occur today. I know of one case in Athens, GA, ten years ago in which a young black man would surely have gone to prison for rape except that the DNA test exonerated him and he was not charged or tried. Of course, that was a responsible prosecutor, unlike the Duke case where the prosecutor went ahead against the evidence.
#5, I agree with your points, but if you paid a guy for EVERY HOUR behind bars, isn’t that like $50k a year? I could understand paying him for an 8 or 10 hour day when he would have been working, but for 24 hours a day?
“If you paid a guy for EVERY HOUR behind bars, isn’t that like $50k a year? I could understand paying him for an 8 or 10 hour day when he would have been working, but for 24 hours a day?”
—Chris Molter [#8]
Wrongful imprisonment imposes costs on every aspect of your life—not just where you work. Hence the fairness of paying inmates something for all the time spent behind bars.
But we could, alternatively, compensate wrongfully imprisoned persons’ prison work at a higher rate—more like what they would have earned on the outside.
Prosecutorial immunity and the fact that they hold elected offices and so wish to appeases the masses (who usually want “quick” justice), perpetuates the problem. Both these things need to be undone. You already have enough problems with people building careers on conviction rates. The whole thing stinks, and obviously stinks, but it takes some whites boys at an elite university to even begin to get our genuine attention. PS That case shows yet another glaring disorder in the system — PC prosecution. The number of activist kooks who go into fields where they can have at those they hate (usually men) is huge.
What is shocking to me is that we have cases where, by some miracle, biological evidence has been preserved and the state refuses to test it against a death row inmate who has consistantly maintained his innocence. Now, I don’t claim to know whether this guy is guilty. I wasn’t there. But when the prisoner is willing to pay for the test, the test would exonerate him if it was not a match and even the victim’s family is calling for the test to be conducted, I cannot comprehend the governor and attorney general of a state denying the test. Their argument is that they trust the jury and the jury’s decision should have finality. Tell that to James Woodward!