Kristina Hahsler, founder of nonprofit Dallas Can Do Better, has been working for years on Spencer's behalf. "Craig Watkins could have done more to help, and he chose not to for whatever reason," she says.
Though the District Attorney's Office hasn't supported Spencer's case, Watkins says he also hasn't decided not to support Spencer's claim of innocence. "We're still looking at it," he says.
Mark Graham
Dale Duke, one of the dozens of wrongfully convicted men freed from prison in Dallas County.
Mark Graham
Johnny Pinchback, one of the dozens of wrongfully convicted men freed from prison in Dallas County.
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Meanwhile, Green waits and prays. "If this boy don't get home soon, I'll go crazy."
Duke, Pinchback and Spencer occupy a troubling time in criminal justice history. Their arrests, and the arrests of nearly all of the Dallas County exonerees, occurred from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. In this decade-long window, DNA samples were collected because blood-type testing was available, but the samples were not tested with the technological acumen that's been developed since.
Starting in the mid-1990s, the testing of DNA evidence became standard protocol, meaning the number of incarcerated people who can be exonerated by previously untested DNA evidence is finite, with few exceptions.
"The best hope for exoneration is going to rely on non-DNA evidence. ... I can tell you that this is the future of innocence work," says Steve Drizin, the legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions and a law professor at Northwestern University.
"Of course, DNA has given credibility to other cases of actual innocence that otherwise wouldn't have been accorded to them," says Rob Warden, the center's executive director. The passage from DNA cases to non-DNA cases, while somewhat gradual and linear in Dallas county, is an imprecise mixture at different phases throughout the country. Warden said he gave a lecture a decade ago saying that the era of DNA-based exonerations was coming to an end, but while the balances are shifting incrementally, even now there is no shortage of DNA cases nationwide.
The Innocence Project of New York, which takes on cases around the country, still focuses primarily on DNA cases. Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck says since it's a national organization and DNA is the "gold standard," the Innocence Project hasn't felt the need to venture into non-DNA cases. "Eventually, I'm sure, but not in the near future," he says.
Keith Findley, president of the Innocence Network, which comprises more than 50 innocence advocacy organizations nationwide, says that increasingly more entities are taking on non-DNA cases, while few still only take DNA-based cases.
"Now we've shown that there are wrongful convictions, so now our conversation can be extended to eyewitness identification, investigative techniques, even prosecutorial misconduct, the culture of district attorney's offices ... and our failure to live up to the code of criminal procedure," seeking not only convictions, but justice, Watkins says.
Most wrongful convictions have occurred because of faulty eyewitness identification. In this year's session of the Texas Legislature, a law was passed that tightens police photograph and live lineup procedures, requiring each law enforcement agency to create a detailed written procedural policy, outlining best practices, including the selection of people in lineups and the instructions given to witnesses.
"Nobody can claim that eyewitness testimony is infallible. But what we do know for sure is that there are a lot of people sitting in prison who were convicted on erroneous eyewitness testimony, where there's no DNA," Gary Udashen says.
A law was also passed to outline requirements for the storage of biological evidence, along with another measure that requires the testing of stored rape kits and outlines a timeline by which new rape kits must be tested.
In the previous legislative session, a law was passed that said a defendant may not be convicted solely on the testimony of someone they spoke to while in jail.
"I think it will have been a watershed time for criminal justice," says Wilson of the Conviction Integrity Unit, referring to the exonerations and all that's changed because of them.
"The front door, I think, is closing — the front door meaning people being wrongfully incarcerated," says Page of the Texas Exoneree Project. "But the back door is still closed. There are still people stuck in prison."
