wheezer
04-28-2008, 06:18 PM
DNA test clears Dallas man jailed 27 years ago
DALLAS — A wrongly convicted Dallas man who spent more than 27 years in prison is expected to be released after a DNA test showed he is innocent of a 1980 murder.
If released on bond at a court hearing Tuesday, 55-year-old James Lee Woodard would be the longest-serving wrongly convicted man in the nation to be exonerated by DNA testing.
He would also become the 18th person in Dallas County to have his conviction cast aside. According to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions, that is more than any county in the nation.
Woodard has been in prison since New Year's Day 1981. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a Dallas woman found sexually assaulted and strangled near the banks of the Trinity River in 1980.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5736620.html
DALLAS — A wrongly convicted Dallas man who spent more than 27 years in prison is expected to be released after a DNA test showed he is innocent of a 1980 murder.
If released on bond at a court hearing Tuesday, 55-year-old James Lee Woodard would be the longest-serving wrongly convicted man in the nation to be exonerated by DNA testing.
He would also become the 18th person in Dallas County to have his conviction cast aside. According to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions, that is more than any county in the nation.
Woodard has been in prison since New Year's Day 1981. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a Dallas woman found sexually assaulted and strangled near the banks of the Trinity River in 1980.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5736620.html