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This version of the report has been prepared by: Dr Robert N Moles

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On 2 July 2008 Dallas News Editorial: “Downside of resisting DNA tests”.

Every time DNA test results reveal another wrongly convicted defendant, there is a nasty, lingering flip side to the coin. The case of Patrick Leondos Waller illustrates how justice is denied twice – once for the innocent man who was wronged, a second time because the guilty can get away to claim more victims.  Further, the Waller case reveals how the justice system itself can be complicit in such an outrage. Former District Attorney Bill Hill and the courts had the chance to cut short Mr. Waller's imprisonment by years, but they stubbornly stood in the way of DNA tests that would have revealed the truth. That failure of justice today is embodied by two men who walk free, despite evidence and confessions that they – and not the convicted man – were involved in the 1992 kidnapping, rape and robbery. What a cruel irony that it took Mr. Waller's successful effort from behind bars to secure DNA tests and lead investigators to the real culprits.  

Mr. Hill's opposition to some DNA requests underscores the importance of current DA Craig Watkins' effort to review those cases through a special office of conviction integrity. That effort deserves the support of anyone who cares about justice.  There's an all-too-familiar underpinning of the Waller exoneration – the 18th secured through DNA tests in Dallas County. As with many of the 31 other Texas DNA exonerations tracked by the New York-based Innocence Project, mistaken eyewitness identification and faulty forensic science were at work. Therein lies a cautionary note for those in the justice system. They will say police techniques and forensic technology have improved and that prosecutors have become more judicious since DNA started to expose so many weak points in the system. All true.

Yet law enforcement professionals must recognize that forensic standards will continue to evolve and, possibly, shed more light someday on today's successful prosecutions. Resisting efforts to shed that light can have a huge downside. Patrick Leondos Waller is Exhibit A.

Dallas County's long-preserved evidence key in exonerations

I get mixed feelings every time I see another wrongly convicted prisoner set free in Dallas County. It's more like a knot in my stomach. And I'm sure I'll feel it again tomorrow, for the umpteenth time, when Patrick Waller walks free. Mr. Waller will be released after DNA tests and confessions by the real criminals revealed that he wasn't involved in a 1992 robbery in which four people were abducted and a woman was raped. The real criminals, who went before a grand jury this year and confessed to the crimes, can't be prosecuted now because the statute of limitations expired. What a travesty.

Worse still, at 9 a.m. Thursday, Mr. Waller will become the 18th Dallas County prisoner exonerated since the state Legislature started allowing post-conviction DNA testing in 2001. Yes, I said 18. And yes, with 18 men cleared by DNA, Dallas County has had more exonerations than any county in the nation over the last seven years. What a shame. No question about that.

But there's also no question about this: Two of the key reasons that Dallas County is turning so many wrongly convicted men free is because it preserved evidence long after winning convictions – in some cases, for decades. And the county has an independent crime lab, the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences, which preserves biological evidence, such as rape exam results. "I think you have to give them credit for that," said Michelle Moore, a Dallas County public defender and president of the Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit legal clinic that has helped free many of the Dallas County exonerees. "There's no other county I'm aware of that's adhered to that [evidence preservation] as much as Dallas County."

Most of the 18 false convictions happened under the watch of the late, legendary district attorney Henry Wade, who built a reputation for being tough – maybe too tough, some say – on crime. It's unfortunate that Mr. Wade isn't around to defend himself because he and, to a lesser extent, the two district attorneys who followed him – John Vance and Bill Hill – certainly have been getting their comeuppance lately. "We're going through the district attorneys' files and notes, and some of these cases look really bad," Ms. Moore said. "That's why I can sit here and tell you that it definitely was a win-at-all-cost attitude."

She said crime evidence was preserved in case it was needed to keep those convicted behind bars, not necessarily to help set them free. No one could foresee DNA tests later being used to unravel a prosecutor's case. Now, however, whether you see it as irony or poetic justice, stored evidence is being used for two reasons – to free the innocent and to challenge the modus operandi of prior DAs. When DNA determines that prosecutors got it wrong, "that's like being punched in the stomach," said John Rolater, who once worked for Mr. Vance and oversaw DNA test requests for Mr. Hill before taking a job in the Collin County DA's office. "It's a threefold tragedy" because it means someone was wrongly convicted, someone who committed a crime got away with it, and the victims don't get the closure they deserve, Mr. Rolater said. Still, he said, "DNA testing is a good thing."

No one would agree more than Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, whose young administration is bent on freeing those wrongly convicted in Dallas County. "Who would have thought back in 1980 that we could take somebody's semen or blood and use it to help prove their guilt or innocence," Mr. Watkins said. While most jurisdictions discarded evidence within months or a few years, if they collected it at all, Mr. Watkins said, "Dallas, for whatever reasons, saved this information and still has it." And that, perhaps as much as the more popular "overzealous prosecution" theory, is largely why Dallas is outpacing the nation in exonerations. "If other counties had kept evidence like Dallas County," said Ms. Moore, "especially in these smaller counties in Texas, we'd find a lot more walking out of prison."

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