Another innocent man convicted in Dallas County has been returned to the free world after spending twenty-two years behind bars.
Jerry Lee Evans fit the physical description of the man who raped an SMU student. The victim rememered that her assailant had a speech impediment–so does Evans. The victim picked Evans out of a police lineup.
That was enough for a Dallas jury. That would likely have been enough for a jury anywhere in America. Because the crime was so deplorable, Evans just had to be guilty. What were the chances that looked like the real rapist and even lisped like the real rapist wasn’t the real rapist?
Once again we see how one eyewitness identification plus one coincidence equals one guilty verdict . . . at least when you have a white victim and a black defendant.
The Dallas exoneration parade prompts an obvious question: what about the victims of wrongful conviction who can’t appeal to DNA evidence? The only way to help these people is to get involved at the pre-prosecution stage and draw loud attention to the insufficiency of the evidence. This is where Friends of Justice goes to work.
Most defendants are guilty as charged, as everyone knows. But how many innocent men and women are going to prison for decades because prosecutors and investigators are playing a dangerous guessing game?
Friends of Justice 
Just last Tuesday I interviewed a genuine case of false confession, a 17-year-old black male who gave the detectives what they insisted upon, because it would end the interrogation, and because they had downplayed the consequences to him if he would just admit. He came out and told his mother, “I think I just confessed to something I didn’t do.” Since he was underage and was questioned without any parent present and no parent waived his rights, I can get his statement suppressed. But what disturbs me equally is that he has airtight alibi witnesses (his school teachers and staff) for the time of the offense. It is another case of mistaken identity– another black male (not questioned) in the same town drives a maroon truck similar to his own, which was inoperable and unplated at the time. The prosecutor didn’t want to hear any of that, so the judge will.
It won’t be the first time I prevented an innocent person’s conviction by beating the streets and solving their crime for them: acquittal in a robbery case against three state witnesses all saying, “oh, yeah, he’s the one, yes I’m sure.” A ringer had done it, and I was fortunate to be able to prove it, and that the police had tainted the identification procedure and had an internal affairs motive for trying to impeach my defendant with a felony, namely that they had beaten him badly and were being investigated for it.
Lafayette musician Charles Goodman (black) told me on the way to a gig one time that back in the pre-DNA days, he had spent four years in Angola for a rape he didn’t commit. Only four years because the real perpetrator struck again, and the authorities realized they had convicted the wrong man. The victim was remorseful; she invited him to dinner with her family. He declined.
Another man of my acquaintance, Robert Miller, was persuaded by his public defender, despite his protestations of innocence, to plead guilty to three felony counts of obscenity (based on one alleged masturbation in front of three schoolgirls), rather than go to trial. Again three eyewitnesses, the victims, had identified him. As in Goodman’s case, the conviction was set aside after the real perpetrator struck again and the mistake was thus realized.
Like DNA exonerations, these things happen but rarely. If you can come up with a large-scale system to prevent wrongful convictions, you will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, because it is a large-scale problem.