onsidering the devastating consequences of even one of these injustices, it is clear that all reasonable steps to prevent wrongful convictions must be taken. The injustice endured by an innocent person whose most basic liberty is denied cannot be overstated. The nightmare of an unjust imprisonment ruins lives and destroys families. For the innocent, prison is a terrifying ordeal few can even imagine.
Beyond the personal cost to those wrongfully convicted and the millions of dollars spent reinvestigating cases and paying compensation, there is another price we all pay—true perpetrators go uninvestigated and unpunished, putting public safety at risk. In each of these innocence cases, a criminal investigation into a serious violent crime was shut down prematurely when authorities prosecuted the wrong person.
In most cases, it took many years to bring these wrongful convictions to light. Most of the crimes remain unsolved because the leads dried up long ago. Fortunately, in some of these cases, the same DNA results that freed the innocent also identified the guilty. It is in those cases that we catch a glimpse of the full cost of a wrongful conviction. The crimes that are committed in the time between a wrongful conviction and the identification of the true perpetrator are an immeasurable cost to the community.
The crimes that are committed in the time between a wrongful conviction and the identification of the true perpetrator are an immeasurable cost to the community.
The Innocence Project’s recent review of DNA exonerations has identified ninety-one actual perpetrators from 233 exoneration cases—approximately thirty-nine percent. The Innocence Project also estimates that forty-nine rapes and nineteen murders were committed by actual perpetrators following wrongful convictions. Although Texas has identified actual perpetrators in about thirty-five percent of DNA exoneration cases, Texas has been unable to prosecute some of those perpetrators because the statute of limitations has passed.
One of the most troubling examples of the threat posed to public safety from wrongful conviction is found in the case of Timothy Cole, who tragically died in prison in 1999 prior to exculpatory DNA testing. Cole was convicted of one of a string of five rapes that occurred in 1985 near the Texas Tech campus in Lubbock based largely on a victim’s eyewitness identification. The photo lineup presented to the victim was highly suggestive. Cole’s picture stood out because the police used a color Polaroid photo of Cole while the other photos were black and white mug shots.
Cole was only convicted of one of the Texas Tech rapes, but because of the similarities in the crimes, the police suspected that Cole was guilty of them all. Consequently, the investigation into the Texas Tech rapes ended once Cole was behind bars.
During his trial, Cole’s defense lawyer tried to argue that a man named Jerry Wayne Johnson was a more plausible alternative suspect, but the judge rejected this line of defense. In May 2008, DNA testing proved that Jerry Wayne Johnson had indeed raped the victim of the crime for which Cole was imprisoned.
Johnson, however, continued to commit horrible crimes. On July 4, 1985, Johnson abducted a man and woman after a party and raped the woman in a cotton field. While out on bond awaiting trial for that rape, Johnson raped a fifteen-year old girl at knifepoint. Additionally, Johnson was suspected in the murder of insurance saleswoman Mary Louise Smith. Smith was found beaten with a blunt object and strangled. Though he was held on a two million dollar bond in that case, the investigation stalled and Johnson was never tried for Smith’s murder. He was convicted of the other two rapes, however, and is now serving a life sentence.
It is impossible to know for sure what would have happened if more careful eyewitness identification procedures were used in the Texas Tech rape investigation. By presenting a photo lineup in which Cole’s picture stood out as different from the fillers, police undermined their ability to get reliable eyewitness evidence and mistakenly came to believe they had their man. Had the investigation continued, Johnson might have been stopped before victimizing others. In September 2008, the victim of the crime for which Cole was convicted, Michele Mallin, spoke out publicly about her experience and her hope that reforms are implemented to avoid such mistakes in the future.
The public was also put at risk following the wrongful conviction of Thomas McGowan, who was convicted of rape and burglary in 1985 following a mistaken eyewitness identification. After DNA test results cleared McGowan of involvement in the crime in 2008, police ran the DNA evidence through a national DNA database and found a match in Kenneth Wayne Woodson. They found that while Woodson went uninvestigated for the McGowan case, he committed another rape and burglary in 1986. He was sentenced to thirty years in prison for that crime and was paroled in January 2006 after serving twenty years. He was then convicted of robbing a bank in Richardson, his parole was revoked, and he was sent back to serve prison time for the bank robbery.
Woodson confessed to the crimes for which McGowan had been wrongly convicted when he was confronted with the DNA evidence. He cannot be charged for those crimes, however, as the statute of limitations has passed. Had the investigation into the 1985 rape not been prematurely shut down by bad eyewitness evidence, police might have been able to prevent Woodson from committing other horrible crimes. The photo lineup that led to the misidentification was suggestive and the mistake could have been avoided.
While a faulty eyewitness identification led the investigators to mistakenly zero in on Taylor, Carroll victimized at least two other women.
The statute of limitations has also passed in another troubling case in which incontrovertible DNA evidence came too late. Although Ronald Taylor was convicted of the 1993 rape of a Houston woman, DNA tests later revealed the identity of the true perpetrator, Roosevelt Carroll. While a faulty eyewitness identification led the investigators to mistakenly zero in on Taylor, Carroll victimized at least two other women. Carroll was convicted of two other rapes and was serving a fifteen-year sentence when Taylor was finally exonerated. The victim of the 1993 rape will never get justice.
Though these investigations and prosecutions were done in good faith, their accuracy was undermined by unreliable evidence. If such tragic and consequential errors in evidence were unavoidable, then one might be forced to accept them as “the cost of doing business.” However, the reality is that many of the errors follow patterns that are predictable and preventable with the right kind of safeguards in place. Until those safeguards have been implemented, Texas faces the risk of more investigations ending prematurely while the true perpetrator remains at large to commit additional crimes.
