Comments on: DNA Helps Free Inmate After 27 Years

60 Minutes: James Woodard Owes His Freedom To Project Started By Dallas County D.A.

[b-easy63]

singinrich I noticed you didn''''''''t address the fact that the reason Dallas County has been able to achieve all these exonerations is because Henry Wade insisted on keeping the evidence when every place else in the country destroyed evidence. Give credit where credit is due - despite your politics.

No one is taking credit away from Craig Watkins for the good policies he has put in place but the plain fact is, neither Bill Hill or Craig Watkins could have achieved these exonerations without the physical evidence being available to test.


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Posted by Dallasite1 at 08:39 PM : May 02, 2008
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That''''d be like giving Hitler credit for keeping such good lists of names of Death Camp victims so the next of kin would be able to find out what happened to them. He''''s a POS, nothing more.

Posted by veteran72 at 12:37 AM : May 03, 2008

WELL SAID

[b-easy63]

singinrich I noticed you didn''''t address the fact that the reason Dallas County has been able to achieve all these exonerations is because Henry Wade insisted on keeping the evidence when every place else in the country destroyed evidence. Give credit where credit is due - despite your politics.

No one is taking credit away from Craig Watkins for the good policies he has put in place but the plain fact is, neither Bill Hill or Craig Watkins could have achieved these exonerations without the physical evidence being available to test.

Posted by Dallasite1 at 08:39 PM : May 02, 2008


You have a point, but it was an inadvertent consequence of Wade''s actions. Maybe he had a fetish and kept evidence like trophies. Certainly it was not because he thought one day science would free some of the people he convicted. If that were true, he would have addressed all the letters from inmates asking for case review. Trying to give Wade credit is like trying to praise an arsonist for having a fire extinguisher in his car after setting a fire. No halo, no cigar and the man''s rep will forever now be tied to corruption and ruination of lives.

[b-easy63]

the more horrific and massive the crime, the more people want to shy away from conspiracy, especially when it could involve people we trust and elected. Except they are still people aren''t they? With agendas and motives and end games. If you want to get away with murder in America--first find like minded people, become a politician, then do it on such a massive scale that no one can accept an official would do it. Perfect recipt--we really should stop trying to make gods or holy people of men. Oh yeah, and eliminate any weak links along the way--make them commit "suicide". A lot of the public can accept that--even if the person is shot directly in the back of the head and then, a gun is placed in his hand.

Reminds me of the Indianapolis case in the 1990s where 2 cops chased down a parolee wanted for purse snatching, handcuffed him with his hands behind his back and somehow they and their car ended up in a blind alley with the 17 year old shot in the temple. the cops abandoned the body. The jury acquitted the cops, ayig that the suspect somehow got his hands from behind his back, got a gun out of his high top sneakers, shot himself in the temple, put his hands back behind his back and placed the gun back in his shoe before he died. The reason only the nozzle of the gun could get in his shoe and the rest could not fit was due to him dying before he could stuff it in.

right. And there was no conspiracy.

[b-easy63]

Just think for 9/11, we can believe that 19 to 21 men or more could carry out the death of over 3000 Americans, but we can''t believe that 19 or more key government people could not have organized the same destruction from within our government. Why? Because we believe that we, are better than we are. We cannot believe Americans would do that to their own people to justify a war or anything else.


It is this refusal to entertain atrocity and complicity that is the true friend of conspiracies. After all, a conspiracy is simply an organized, secret event by a group of people--usually in government. The key word is people--we''ve had enough secret events, cover ups and lies revealed to point to some sort of conspiracy--but we can''t get beyond the teaching that such thinking is delusional. Is it? Is it really?

[b-easy63]

"I believe in conspiracies. I think that''''s just too simple of an explanation." Posted by singinrich at 08:30 PM : May 02, 2008


Conspiracy theories are believed because often, more than a kernel of truth is in them. Those who are involved in conspiracies work over time to ridicule that mind set, to lambast it and make the people out to be paranoid or crazy or just plain off the mark. It is in the interest of any complicated crime and in the mind of any people who commit these crimes to make sure the public is skeptical of the idea of conspiracy. For some reason, people believe that if a lot of people are involved in a crime, someone must talk. Not if planned really carefully. Not if weak links are eliminated. Not if the crimes are so horrific or on such a large scale that the public cannot accept it was planned by certain groups or organizations.

[whatithink-2009]

b-easy63,

So true. I hope the members of the parole board have watched this program and this situation unfold. Somebody here said it before - law and justice are not mutually inclusive.

[whatithink-2009]

Posted by b-easy63 at 08:26 AM : May 05, 2008

Good post.

[b-easy63]

Never dawned on the Parole Board that he might not admit to guilt because HE WASN''''T GUILTY.
"

Posted by whatithink at 02:55 PM : May 02, 2008


Even scarier is how many of us would admit to being guilty after some of those years--figuring the courts and system are stacked anyway--and if we never LIED and said we did it--we''d never get out.

(Then again, if after saying you weren''t guilty, you then said you were--they''d say "see? we KNEW you did it--now we are gonna deny parole--because you are obviously a remorseless liar as well as a rapist and murderer. Have a nice life behind bars."

[whatithink-2009]

hhroams,

There is definitely an issue with the death penalty. You said it yourself. The DA was able to convict innocent people. If he could do it for life terms, of course he could do it for the death penalty. You are DREAMING if you think there is no chance that innocent people have been killed by the state.

[luxurytax-2009]

i''M SO VERY HAPPY FOR THIS MAN.IN MY OPINION HE DESERVES ALOT MORE THAN FREEDOM.27 YEARS IS A VERY LONG TIME TO SERVE A SENTENCE FOR A CRIME THAT YOU DID NOT COMMIT.IMAGINE BEING CALLED A MURDERERFOR 27 YEARS. IF HE WAS WHITE IT WOULDNT HAVE WENT DOWN LIKE THAT AND IM NOT RACIST AND I AM BLACK AND YALL KNMO WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT AND IF YOU DONT DIG THEN DUECES

[whatithink-2009]

And Texas thinks it never executed an innocent person. 27 years is too long, but I''m sure there are some people dead today who did not do the crime. Shameful.

[vet_sk]

It is time to clean up our prisons and while there are some crimes that require long sentences, it seems that we could rethink things.
You have to admit for most of the people on this forum that going to prison for even a year or two is a life as we know it altering situation.
I am for better prisons and lighter sentences for non-violent offenses.

[sabella5]

Good for 60 Minutes for covering an injustice. But please don''t leave the piece as Woodard gets out of jail! Beyond the daily hardship of dealing with the 27 years of wrongful imprisonment is the toll of adjusting to the society he left behind all those years ago. Let America step up to the plate and make his transition as smooth as possible!

[mcvet]

The PEOPLE of the STATE of TEXAS are the one''s who need to do some soul searching. THEY and THEY ALONE put the people in office who have made their justice system the worst in the nation... maybe the world. It''s disgusting to CONSTANTLY read about such things. You have to wonder how many people these freaks have Murdered under the cover of "Justice". Sieg Heil Y''all.

[mijjkj23]

I would hope that these prisoners don''t start sueing for large amounts of money. How quick do you think they will stop all efforts to free innocent men when they can''t afford to do it anymore? That would just make it easier for corruption to continue if the
DA and the prosecuting attorneys know their verdicts won''t be questioned. Please think about putting the efforts towards stopping these injustices everywhere and abolishing capital punishment.

[sabella5]

Good for 60 Minutes for covering an injustice. But please don''t leave the piece as Woodard gets out of jail! Beyond the daily hardship of dealing with the 27 years of wrongful imprisonment is the toll of adjusting to the society he left behind all those years ago. Let America step up to the plate and make his transition as smooth as possible!

[pfd572]

Too many cases are decided by the most unreliable evidence there is: eye-witness testimony and finger prints. Neither is a science and both are much too subjective to be relied on. Police and prosecutors know how unreliable an eye-witness ID, but juries love them, so they take advantage of that. Plus, there is no standard to fingerprint identification. Some experts and jurisdictions require a 13-point match, some as little as a 4-point match and others have no standard at all, just the determination of the examiner. This also scares the heck out of me, what if a miscarriage of justice, based on faulty science or crooked prosecution where to happen to me or my loved ones? I am not so naive to believe that something like that could never happen. Rules of evidence should be clear and narrowly interpreted to protect the innocent and make convictions more precise. And all of this is possible today.

[honor100]

no one is above the law even proscuters, A court with no honor is not a court,its a crime! Use your vote to get rid of the riff raff

[pfd572]

What I find equally scary is the fact that I live in a country were we spend millions of dollars and hundreds of hours prosecuting someone and some jurisdictions will spend just as much time and money fighting any attempt to exonerate the innocent. Refusing to allow the testing of DNA, refusing to release the exonerated, withholding evidence, perjury, and the continued denial that no innocent person has ever been executed. That is truly frightening and should have reasonable people protesting and campaigning for big changes to the legal system. Call be a bleeding heart, it doesn''t bother me one bit.

[carlylaine]

I shouldn''t be appalled at this. The government is set up precisely for these types of railroaded convictions. And nothing is done to the prosecution, this is not right.

Every person who was falsely convicted should sue the state. Things would change and now...they''d learn over time.