DNA clears Texas man of sex assault after 20 years

(AP) FORT WORTH, Texas - DNA test results have cleared a man who's served more than 20 years of a life sentence after being convicted of sexually assaulting a teenager.

The Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney's Office is recommending that David Lee Wiggins be released on bond immediately, pending a final decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Prosecutors say DNA test results show that Wiggins is not the source of genetic evidence found on the 14-year-old girl's clothes.

He was convicted in 1989, a year after the assault in which the Fort Worth girl identified Wiggins as her attacker.

Wiggins' attorney from the Innocence Project in New York filed a motion for post-conviction DNA testing.

Prosecutors received the lab results clearing Wiggins two weeks ago.

[Squachem]

Things are just as bad in Vermont. DNA testing recently revealed Carl Grega, who was on vacation in Vermont over 15 years ago, was not the person who sodomized and murdered his wife. The prosecutor has argued in opposing Grega's release on bond that the circumstantial evidence used at trial to convict Grega outweighs the DNA test results. Prosecutors in Vermont routinely violate the Constitutional rights of defendants, and when exposed, insist that innocent defendants must sign a waiver of their rights to civil claims before the state will release them.

[rharrin1]

Texas has always been a hang em high justice system.

[lordgoogoo]

Hope the DNA tech was at the top of their class.

[expatriate2]

The Memphis Three was a prime case of injustice. They could be freed because they were innocent but had to sign a paper pleading guilty without the right to sue the state.

[credibility2]

The science of DNA twenty years ago was crude, compared to today's advances. That said, based on what it was 20 yrs. ago, the conclusions were correct. Today, however, technology soundly refutes those conclusions, leading to the reversal of a court's decision. That too, is also correct.

[ReckonedTruth]

Kudos to the "INNOCENCE PROJECT".. who have proven many alleged felons have been wronfully convicted...

keep the good work up.. "IP"..receives donation..I've given to "IP" or awhile now.

It's my belief a many of alleged felons have bee wrongfully convicted to life sentences/sentences and also put on death roll..

Our justice system is bias and apply second standards.. and a game for the prosecutor and defense..to see how many knotches they can earned as concil..EVEN if evidence have PROVE without a SHADOw of a doubt the wrong person has been convicted..

[Calltwoarms]

Only in Texas do they deny DNA testing to inmates convicted of rape. Only after going through an exhausting procedure can an inmate get a DNA test done to clear his name. Typical of Rick Perry and his "I know in my heart he's guilty" mentality.

After 20 years in a Texas prison no amount of money can make this right. At least he wasn't executed while incarcerated for some other crime he was "guilty" of.

[expatriate2]

In Texas they don't have last meals, they have the cafeteria style.

[KansasCity-2012]

Texas Criminal Justice is largely a vigilante hunt designed to feed the hungry appetites of angry citizens.

The State of Texas has no full time legislature. It only convenes once every 2 years for 90 days...mostly to pass a budget.

In Texas, large cities like Houston, Dallas and San Antonio tend to legislate outside their boundaries, to close the shortfalls left to them by the state. As a result, every election fills the airwaves with TV commercials bragging about "tough on crime" postures and branding liberals as softees.

The cost of abridgment of a citizen's rights is taking an alarming direction. City and Country governments are facing huge budget problems when bad cops and wrongful prosecutions send their operating budgets in distress.

The true cost of power is then later felt in taxpayer revolts, where education taxes, the highest taxation power in Texas, struggle to keep pace with rising costs to educate.

It's ironic that education itself, is seen as the best crime fighting tool around, yet, the State Legislature still legalizes dropping out, and wont legalize corporal punishment with judicial immunity.

Texans created their system and need to reform it.

[netjunkie1]

Texas also practices obsolete forensics as well.
I read an article and it became a feature about an investigation that was called arson murder, when in reality when an independent investigator pointed right to the source that cost the life of an innocent convicted husband.

Yesterday I read that a shootout killed a trooper who had a large funeral in a stadium.
The article mentioned that 2 bystanders were shot, one died, but it doesn't say who killed the bystander...it implies the dead shooter did it, but I know Texans, they wouldn't admit a mistake if they elected one to office.

[expatriate2]

Speaking of morons . . . . what other state gives a woman 10 years probation for murdering her husband? What other state has a police chief making up a list of his enemies for his undercover agents to frame their children of drug charges for revenge? What other state elects an idiot governor who ignores pleas from around the world and from prestigious people to change the death penalty for a woman on death row to life in prison and then refuses and starts singing, "Please don't kill me, please don't kill me?"
That, my friend, is Texas and if you're from there, it's evidence.

[djseavy]

What we're seeing here is exactly what much of society has asked for. Especially when it comes to rape. Politicians have made their meal tickets becoming "tough on crime" and because sex offenses is a very emotional and hot topic, they've cashed in on those big time. Prosecutors can twist words to make anybody look guilty of a sex crime, but a defense attorney in MN has a long list of things he or she can not say to a jury. In other words, the deck is stacked against the accused and convictions are all but a certainty. Hopefully this will change, but I wouldn't bet on it. So long as no proof whatsoever is required to convict someone of a sex crime - especially against children, innocent people will continue to be found guilty and sentenced to long prison terms. I'm not defending guilty sex offenders, but explaining what our laws have accomplished with respect to innocent people. In a trial for someone accused of a sex offense, he or she may as well have their bag packed, because they stand a 99% chance of conviction, and if they are, they stand a 100% chance of incarceration for much longer than many murderers receive. It's no wonder innocent people are doing long periods of time in prison before some are fortunate enough to get cleared through DNA evidence.

[ludvig1-2009]

For some crimes of course like robbing banks, DNA doesn't do the defendant any good. A lawyer in Marin County was arrested for robbing a bank even though someone else's fingerprints were on the holdup note because he looked like the robber. It took him 4 months to clear his name. About the same time Contra Costa County also arrested another man for bank robbery because he looked like the robber but later admitted the man they arrested that he had video proof that he was in another state at the time of the robbery. Identification of people by eyeballs I imagine has put many an innocent man behind bars and DNA won't help them.