Two more men, Chris Scott and Claude Simmons, have been declared innocent by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. 

This time, no DNA evidence was involved; the real culprit, Alonzo Hardy, confessed to the crime and also pointed the finger at his buddy, Don Michael Anderson. 

Sixty percent of the 251 men exonerated on the basis of DNA evidence in recent years have been African-American.  This suggests that, adjusting for the fact that African-Americans comprise only 12% of the population, black people are twelve times as likely to be wrongfully convicted as white people. 

What if Alonzo Hardy had kept his mouth shut?  The state of Texas would remain convinced that Scott and Simmonds were guilty. 

Few people grasp how easy it is to convict black males of violent or drug-related crime.  No real evidence is required; just some person pointing the finger.  Does the man behind the finger have zero credibility?  Will he benefit from his testimony?  No problem!  So long as the person in authority says the calls the defendant plenty of nasty names the jury will convict 95% of the time. 

This is particularly true when, as in the Curtis Flowers case, the defendant is a low-status African-American and the victim is a high-status white person.  Evidence that would never convict a white-man-in-good-standing will sell a low-status black man down the river almost every time.  If you can keep black folks off the jury a conviction is virtually assured.  Evidence is nice but not necessary.

Congratulations to the innocence projects at at the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Texas at Austin for bringing this case to light.  Without their advocacy a mere confession by another individual wouldn’t matter.  An inmate was willing to take the rap for the rape that sent Timothy Cole to prison. Nobody cared.  Cole died in prison before he could be exonerated.