[Vision2020] Innocence Project: Man 30 Years Jailed Proved Innocent With DNA Test: 41 Freed in Texas Via DNA Since 2001

[Ted Moffett]

Innocence Project website information below on the case mentioned in
the subject heading:

http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/Houston_Man_To_Be_Declared_Innocent_After_Serving_30_Years_For_a_Dallas_Rape_and_Robbery_He_Didnt_Commit.php
-------------------------
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343902/Cornelius-Dupree-30-years-jail-armed-robbery-finally-proved-innocent-DNA-test.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Man who spent 30 years in jail for armed robbery is finally proved
innocent after DNA test

By David Gardner
Last updated at 8:24 AM on 4th January 2011

A man who has spent 30 years behind bars - protesting his innocence
the entire time - will finally get his conviction overturned in court.

Cornelius Dupree, 51, was jailed in 1979 for the rape and armed
robbery of a woman in Dallas, Texas. But he has had to wait until now
for his record to be wiped clean after DNA tests finally excluded him
as the attacker.

He was paroled from his 75-year sentence in July after preliminary
test results appeared to prove he could not have carried out the
brutal crime.

Now the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office has confirmed that it
supports Dupree’s bid to get his record cleansed and will ask a judge
to make it official tomorrow.

Dupree spent more time wrongly imprisoned than any other inmate in
Texas, which has freed 41 innocent prisoners through genetic testing
since 2001.

The large number of wrongful convictions is even more alarming in a
state which has the death penalty.

Dupree's 30 years would surpass James Woodard, who spent more than 27
years imprisoned for a murder that he was cleared of in 2008.

About two dozen DNA exonerations have happened in Dallas since 2001,
more than any other county in the nation.

Only two states - Illinois and New York - have freed more wrongly
convicted prisoners through DNA evidence, according to the Innocence
Project - a New York-based legal centre representing Dupree that
specialises in wrongful conviction cases.

Dallas has managed to revisit more old cases because the county crime
lab maintains biological evidence even decades after a conviction,
leaving samples available to test.

In addition, District Attorney Craig Watkins has cooperated with
innocence groups in reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates for DNA
testing.

Watkins, the first black DA in Texas history, has also pointed to what
he calls ‘a convict-at-all-costs mentality’ that he says permeated the
prosecutor’s office before he arrived three years ago.

The DNA testing also excluded a second defendant, Anthony Massingill,
who was subsequently convicted in another sexual assault case and
sentenced to life in prison.

Massingill remains in jail but maintains his innocence. DNA testing in
that second case is ongoing.

Dupree was charged in 1979 with raping and robbing a 26-year-old woman
and sentenced in 1980 to 75 years in prison for aggravated robbery. He
was never tried on the rape charge.

According to court documents, the woman and her male companion stopped
at a Dallas liquor store in November 1979 to buy cigarettes and use a
payphone.

As they returned to their car, two men, at least one of whom was
armed, forced their way into the vehicle and ordered them to drive.

They also demanded money from the two victims.

The men eventually ordered the car to the side of the road and forced
the male driver out of the car. The woman attempted to flee but was
pulled back inside.

The perpetrators drove the woman to a nearby park, where they raped
her at gunpoint. They debated killing her but eventually let her live,
keeping her rabbit-fur coat and her driver's licence and warning her
they would kill her if she reported the assault to police.

The victim ran to the nearest highway and collapsed unconscious by the
side of the road, where she was discovered.

About five days later, two men whose descriptions did not match Dupree
tried to sell the rabbit-fur coat at a grocery store two miles from
the liquor store, according to court documents.

The car stolen from the victims was found abandoned in the parking lot.

Dupree and Massingill were arrested in December because they looked
similar to two suspects being sought in another sexual assault and
robbery.

The 26-year-old victim picked both men out of a photo line-up, but her
male companion did not identify either defendant.

Dupree was convicted and spent the next three decades appealing. The
Court of Criminal Appeals turned him down three times.

The Innocence Project, which took on his case in 2006, obtained DNA
testing last summer on biological evidence taken from the female
victim in 1979.

In July last year, shortly after Dupree's release, the test results
cleared Dupree and Massingill.
------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett