Cornelius Dupree Jr. was recently released from prison after DNA testing revealed that he could not have committed the crime. After being convicted of rape and robbery, Dupree was sentenced to 75 years in prison in 1980. He spent 30 years maintaining his innocence. He would have been paroled had he admitted committing the crimes, but he refused. Finally, DNA testing of evidence cleared him of any wrongdoing.
Dupree's story is all too familiar in Texas. Dallas County leads the nation in DNA exonerations. The county has released 21 individuals who were convicted of crimes, accounting for almost half of all exonerations in Texas. According to the Innocence Project, the average prison sentence served prior to release is 13.5 years. The most common reason for the wrongly accused getting convicted? Misidentification. Roughly 80 percent of those who have been cleared by DNA at the national level were incorrectly identified by victims or witnesses.
Victims are under a lot of pressure after a crime has been committed. They want to help police solve the crime. Witness or victims will see either photo or in-person suspect lineups, and may be steered toward an individual who is the main focus of the investigation. The more confident police seem in a suspect, the more a victim may believe that this particular person actually committed the crime.
The main reason that DNA has been used so often in Dallas County is the fact that the county has preserved the evidence from so many crimes. In many other jurisdictions, inmates are unable to have DNA tests conducted simply because the evidence has been lost or destroyed. This may mean that dozens of wrongly convicted persons will remain behind bars for crimes that they did not commit.
Many proponents of DNA testing have called for procedures to be put in place nationwide to ensure that those imprisoned are actually guilty of the crimes. Also, law enforcement agencies have started to implement improvements in lineups, such as showing photos of suspects one at a time or having officers not connected to the case running the lineups.
If you or a loved one has been charged with a crime, contact an experienced criminal defense attorney in your area. You need to protect your rights, because it can be difficult to get a conviction overturned if you are innocent. Taking the proper steps early in the process will help build a strong defense to the charges against you.
