Free After Thirty Years

This week Cornelius Dupree, Jr. was declared an innocent man after serving more than three decades for a crime he did not commit. Dupree was charged in Dallas, TX in 1980of rape and robbery. The conviction was based largely on a faulty witness identification. Earlier this year, DNA evidence from the rape proved that Dupree was not the perpetrator.

Dupree was represented by Innocence Project Co-Founder Barry Scheck and Senior Staff Attorney Nina Morrison. Morrison said “Mistaken identification has always plagued the criminal justice system, but great strides have been made in the last three decades to understand the problem and come up with fixes like those being considered by the state Legislature that help minimize wrongful convictions. We hope state lawmakers take note of the terrible miscarriage of justice suffered by Cornelius. When the wrong person is convicted of a crime, the real perpetrator goes free, harming everyone.”

Legislation is in the works in Texas to provide standards to law enforcement for administering lineups and photo arrays. These standards would help to prevent eyewitness misidentification by preventing influence of the witness and by imposing strict standards to increase the accurary and reliability of identifications.

Anthony Massingill was convicted with Dupree. He is expected to be exonerated later this month.

Innocence Blog. "Houston Man to be Declared Innocent After Serving 30 Years for a Dallas Rape and Robbery He Did Not Commit." January 4 2011.

Texas Forensic Science Commission Discusses Willingham Case

After nearly two years, the Texas Forensic Science Commission (TFSC) has still yet to reach a decision about the Cameron Todd Willingham case, which has been pending since 2008. In 1992, Willingham was convicted of setting a fire in his home that caused the death of his two daughters. Willingham never stopped proclaiming his innocence. He was executed in 2004.

Members of the commission were reluctant to adopt the findings of the draft report, which states that the fire investigators were not negligent because they used fire investigation standards that existed at the time. One member, Sarah Kerrigan, thinks there is a disconnect between the standards used in the investigation and the ones widely accepted now. Another member, Garry Adams, said he was “not completely convinced that the science wasn’t available to the analysts” at the time of the Willingham investigation.

The commission will meet again on November 19th to hear expert testimony about the investigation standards then and now.

Click here to see video of Barry Scheck speaking in front of the TFSC last week.

Smith, Morgan. Forensic Science Commission Takes up Willingham. http://www.texastribune.org/texas-dept-criminal-justice/death-penalty/forensic-science-commission-takes-up-willingham/