Texas Frees Rape Convict Exonerated By DNA After 26-Year Term

Fox News ^ | Thursday, January 03, 2008 | AP

[cougar_mccxxi]

DALLAS — A man convicted of raping a woman in 1981 and sentenced to life in prison has been cleared by DNA evidence and will be released, according to attorneys who have helped free 14 other wrongfully convicted inmates in Dallas County.

Charles Chatman, 47, is expected to be released Thursday after spending more than 26 years behind bars, said Natalie Roetzel of the Innocence Project of Texas.

"I never lost hope," Chatman told The Associated Press. "I always believed I would get out. I didn't know when or how, but I kept believing."

[in hoc signo vinces]

Agreed...hard to put a price on it...but as someone clearly stated it will be hard for him to adjust back into society...so the state will be made to pay by a good attorney...

[JamesP81]

He’ll be getting a check from the state...rest assured.

As well he should. And the more pain it makes the state feel, the better. Sometimes a club is the only way to make anyone understand or learn anything.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Chatman said he was already in jail on an unrelated burglary when he was charged.

Sounds like another case of "can't put him in jail for the crimes he committed so we'll find something else."

How long until he's back in police custody?

Didn't know Texas police kept -70 freezers?

[-YYZ-]

You just don’t understand - putting the occasional (or maybe not so occasionally) innocent person in jail is just the price we pay to have law and order. And just because new evidence, or evidence of proecutorial/police misconduct comes to light, that doesn’t mean they should get a new trial - why, the whole system would grind to a halt.

Well, those are the arguments you’ll hear from various ambitious political types, anyway, not to mention various “law and order” types on this forum.

[Emmett McCarthy]

I see your point on that. Is there not some reliable, trustworthy third party scientific lab involved in the process which would solidly verify the evidence? This guy’s conviction was in 1981 when DNA comparisons where virtually unheard of and I’d hate to see politics as a pivotal matter in either freeing the guilty or imprisoning the innocent.

[microgood]

When both lawyers are on the same side, in this case with a motive to get convicts exonerated, then the evidence can't be considered trustworthy.

Are you saying the prosecutor should fight the attempt to free someone when DNA testing conclusively proves he is innocent?

I can see him fighting for a conviction initially, but lets say they found the real murderer of someone convicted of a murder, should that prosecutor let the real murderer go to keep the falsely convicted murderer in prison?

[starlifter]

That makes absolutely no sense.

[originalbuckeye]

I wish the story had said that the DNA from the single swab collected at the time of the rape didn’t match Chatman. Perhaps the perpetrator wore a condom. Do you all not remember Barry Sheck from the OJ trial? He convinced a jury that the DNA evidence was planted. He became involved in the freeing of convicts through DNA. But OJ was guilty and Sheck participated in that fraud trial. All I’m saying is that perhaps this story is not what it seems and the Innocence Project lawyers are less than truthful. If he really is innocent, I’m glad he was released.

Meanwhile, I’d also like to point out that, in California, the term “reasonable doubt” has come to mean any doubt that a made-up story can conjure up.

[erikm88]

Yes. It is called Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). It is used to copy DNA. It has been used in prior cases to exonerate or convict a defendant. In some cases where DNA has been limited, PCR was used to test against other questioned samples admitted into evidence.

[SkyDancer]

Same sort of thing happened in England - difference was the inmate was charged room and board for the time he spent in prison ....

[TexasCajun]

As bad as Texas Crime Labs are, it wouldn't bother me at all to ban the Death Penalty.

Houston's Crime Lab is the worst.

Some of these technicians should be in prison!

[doug from upland]

I certainly hope and expect that DNA evidence is going to result in better and fairer justice.

[doug from upland]

I certainly want bad guys punished, but each innocent who is behind bars is one too many.

[starlifter]

Agree.

IIRC, the sense in Philly a couple of hundred years ago was something along the lines of, “better 10 guilty go free than one innocent be imprisoned.”

[Arkancide]

So whose DNA was it?

[boop]

"Are you saying the prosecutor should fight the attempt to free someone when DNA testing conclusively proves he is innocent?"

I'm clearly missing something here. How does DNA prove he DIDN'T commit the rape? Was there only semen samples that convicted him in 1981? Only the vicitim? I just can't believe that only based on one piece of evidence he would have been jailed for life.

[erikm88]

I think he was convicted by improper admission of identity evidence (line up), and his attorney appealed from that procedural error.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

Years ago, shortly after DNA testing first became routine, I was told by an assistant DA here in Chicago that in around a quarter of rape arrests based solely on a stranger-eyewitness-identification the charges were being dropped before trial when the DNA did not come up a match. He said that if you were honest about it, you would conclude that a quarter of the people imprisoned in such cases prior to DNA testing were likely innocent – at least of the crime for which they were convicted.

[boop]

"Since he was already in jail for burglary, he is no innocent, but I’m glad he’ll be exonerated of charges he didn’t commit!"

I completely agree. I'm curious about the Innocence Project. It seems like their batting average is 100% as far as they believe everyone is "innocent". Do they ever take a case, then find out the guy is guilty as hell? I mean EVERYONE in jail claims to be innocent.

[JAKraig]

The system makes it very easy to convict and very difficult to get out of a conviction. Even if all you have is a crying witness saying “He Did it!” that is usually enough. It doesn’t matter if you have an alibi or were a thousand miles away. The jury figures the cops and DA are honest and wouldn’t put an innocent man on trial. I have seen it many many times. The cops and DA’s think they are doing us a favor.

I think the sin is on us when our elected officials make such mistakes. Poor guy. 26 years is a long time. I hope his burglary sentence was a long one so that he didn’t have a LOT of extra years to suffer.