Innocence Project to review Dallas County convictions

Dallas Morning News | Steve McGonigle:

“The extraordinary number of DNA-based exonerations in Dallas County has led to a unique partnership between prosecutors and advocates for those who may be wrongly convicted. District Attorney Craig Watkins has agreed to allow the Innocence Project of Texas to review whether DNA tests should be done in any of the cases of 354 people convicted of rapes, murders and other felonies as far back as 1970. Most of those requests already have been denied by trial court judges on the recommendation of former District Attorney Bill Hill. Mr. Watkins, who succeeded Mr. Hill on Jan. 1, wants to ensure that those decisions were correct, his first assistant said. 'It's just simply the right thing to do,' Terri Moore said this week.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

District Attorney Watkins has received much criticism since being elected in 2006 in the Democratic sweep of Dallas County elective offices. This announcement should earn Mr Watkins an equal amount of praise.

The District Attorney's office should be as concerned with ensuring justice as it is with protecting its conviction rate. If DNA evidence reveals some of those convictions were wrongly achieved, so be it. Mr Watkins' change of policy for the District Attorney's office benefits not only the wrongly convicted. By exonerating the innocent, law enforcement can resume investigation of cases where the guilty have never been brought to justice, thus benefiting all of us.

DNA testing is a powerful tool for prosecutors as well as defendants. The District Attorney's office should have insisted on its use in old cases from the beginning, not resisted it. It's just simply the right thing to do.