From Harpers

In Texas, 41 Exonerations from DNA Evidence in 9 Years

By Scott Horton

In a Dallas courtroom yesterday Cornelius Dupree, who had spent thirty years in prison on a conviction for rape, robbery, and abduction, was told that he had been exonerated. DNA evidence had shown unequivocally that he was not the man who had committed the crime in question. The judgment came too late for Dupree, who had already served his full sentence; the court was merely terminating his parole status. The Dallas Morning News reports:


With 21 DNA exonerations in Dallas County—more than any county in the nation since 2001—it was believed there were few wrongly incarcerated people left who could be cleared by DNA evidence. Authorities thought that evidence with DNA had only been preserved by the county’s lab since 1981.

But the county’s crime lab discovered DNA to test in pubic hair cuttings of the rape victim while searching for evidence in the Dupree case at the request of the district attorney’s office. Previously, those who worked on DNA exoneration cases believed there would be no DNA to test because swabs that would have collected DNA with rape kits were not preserved at the time.

The Dallas County district attorney’s office says it will now examine two new groups of cases: those that were previously discounted because they were so old that no testable evidence was believed to exist, and more recent cases that the office had already reviewed and rejected as potential exonerations because prosecutors thought no testable evidence existed.

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