The lineup also wasn't the only thing that led prosecutors to zero in on McGowan, Corley says. McGowan refused at first to give a blood sample, Corley says, and he evaded police when they went looking for him. When they found him, Corley says, he was "in this bad, bad hotel off Harry Hines, one of those you rent by the hour." He says McGowan was with a prostitute at the time. (McGowan says it was actually his girlfriend.)
"He did not want to go," Corley says. "He pretty much told me where I could stick it." Because around six months had passed, McGowan wasn't able to remember exactly where he'd been the day of the crime. "It doesn't matter," Corley recalls him saying. "I didn't do it."
The results from the blood test came back inconclusive. But Corley felt there was enough circumstantial evidence for the case to go to a grand jury. "The car he drove matched exactly as what she'd given as the bad guy having. He fits the description to a T. He's acting very guilty. It's not the best case in the world, but I felt, 'Am I supposed to be the judge and the jury here? Let's give it to a grand jury.'"
Plus, Corley says, he trusted Debbie Jones. "There's nothing wrong with Debbie," he says plainly. "I had an intelligent, articulate, educated witness. I've worked 7-Eleven robberies where the guy comes in for 15 seconds and clerk's scared to death." In those cases, he says, the victim ID isn't as convincing. But here, he says, "Her face was a foot away from his face for a very extended period of time, and she's not — she's a smart person. I felt good with her identification. ... She was sure. She was absolutely positive. That's not the best case that you want, your case from heaven, but it's workable. There was not a red flag somewhere. It fit being him."
The grand jury agreed. McGowan was tried and convicted of burglary and rape. He got two consecutive life sentences. "I didn't think I was gonna ever get out," he says. Neither did Jones.
In early 2007, McGowan wrote a letter to the Innocence Project, begging them to look into his case. He didn't hear back for a long while. His hope started to wane. He feared he would die in prison. He feared his mother, who was in bad health, would die before he saw her face again.
"One night I was in my cell, and I started praying," he remembers. "I said, 'God, look, I don't know where else to turn. Get me out this prison where I can be with my mother before she goes to her grave. I don't wanna die in this prison. God, you get me out of this prison and I'll tell people the goodness you've done.'"
Three months later a letter arrived from the Innocence Project. They would take his case, they told him, and not a moment too soon. Under state law at that time, evidence was destroyed 25 years after a conviction. He'd been locked up for 23.
The Innocence Project contacted Dallas County prosecutors, who found Jones' rape kit and agreed to re-test it. Jones and her husband, who had since divorced, were asked to submit DNA samples. The DA's office assured her that it was a common request from convicts. But just days later, the results came back: the DNA evidence had excluded McGowan. He was innocent.
When she found out McGowan was getting out, Jones was convinced there had been a mix-up at the lab. "It's not something your mind can process," she says. In the decades since McGowan went to prison, Jones had moved on as best she could. But she'd gone to counseling at Parkland's rape crisis center exactly once, soon after the rape, and found that the counselor didn't seem particularly interested in talking about it, asking a lot of questions about her childhood instead. Jones never went back.
She had wanted badly to leave Texas. Her sister had left the state shortly after Jones' rape, not able to handle staying in the house they'd shared. Her church helped pay for the move. But no one bothered to tell Jones that the state had set up a victim compensation fund in 1979, which would have paid for her to move, plus counseling and medication. She and her husband did leave the state for about seven years, she says, but were eventually forced to move back for his job.
So when Corley and Hammond broke the news, Jones says, "It was like I was in the Twilight Zone. I seriously thought they were kidding, playing a joke on me. I could not process what they were saying. No way could they let Thomas out, because we all knew he did it."
Corley and Hammond showed Jones a piece of paper with the DNA results. She looked back at them, repeating over and over, "That's wrong. He did it. That's wrong."
"I know it's hard to believe," Corley told her. "I didn't believe it myself. But we have to believe it, because that's what the DNA shows."
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How has this entire article gone with only as much as a paragraph discussing the fact that REAL people got falsely accused of rape?! The entire thing treats the Rape victim as the true and only victims, refusing to use the word "victim" for the people that spent their lives and died in prison for a crime they didn't commit. The fact of the matter remains that a rape accusation is basically a rape conviction, and this is not limited to any of these cases.
The worst of it is that the real rapist is out there & should be in prison. They don't stop until they're stopped. Studies shows keeping a rapist in jail for 7 years is cheaper than rehabilitating one victim.
Pedophiles especially need to be locked up for good.
I wonder what role the police played in charging the wrong guy? They probably gave her a list of photos of "suspects" they'd targeted - rightly or wrongly & she just thought one of them had to be the guy.
I'm so sick of lazy cops just there to collect a paycheck until their pension kicks in.
Good cops who do care are few and far between. Seems like all the good, caring guys I know who want to be cops get booted, while the slime balls I've known get the job!!
We all suffer as a result.
I don't see where the police played a role in this one. I bet the "good cops" get sick of hearing garbage like this post from folks with an axe to grind.
just imagine the countless times Mcgowans got beaten/raped in prison as pedo's & rapists are hated by the inmates.. they're number one on the "shanking list". Now i dont see him being labelled a "victim". heck i dont even see him painted as a fucking saint for being so forgiving of the situation..
while what happened to the woman was terrible, as rape is terrible, i dont blame the woman for she was not the one who wrongly convicted him. the whole situation was unfortunate. my problem is with the way this article is written. both individuals were victims, but only one was painted as the 'strong survivor' while the other 'should just be thankful he's free now'.
"Things are less breezy for Jones. She's learned a lot about forgiveness,"
I think Mcgowans learned about forgiveness more than she ever will..
For the people who are saying that Jones should be punished: Jones had no interest in or benefit from the wrongful conviction of an innocent man. She did the best that she could to identify the man who assaulted her. She seems to have been as convinced as anyone reasonably could have been that she was identifying the correct person. Should no stranger rapes have been prosecuted without hard evidence? I don't have the answer to that question. Jones, however, wasn't out to ruin someone's life. Her own life has been greatly damaged as well. The one who should be blamed for the wrongful conviction is the same as the one who should be blamed for the rape.
There may be cases where people failed to properly weigh their own doubt against the gravity of their accusations. There may be cases where racism led to bias or fabricated memories. There may be cases where people just wanted so badly for a conviction to grant them closure that they lied to themselves or others. I can't say what played into Jones' accusations, but the attitude that every victim who makes a mistake in identifying a stranger that they met once under traumatic circumstances deserves to be stoned is wrong.
Praise Christ for the overturning of wrongful convictions and for his loving mercy that he's willing to give to the raped, the wrongfully accused, those of the legal system, and to the rapist. By his scourging we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5) (NASB)
The fact that women get away with a slap on the wrist if anything when falsely accusing someone of rape not only destroys the life of an innocent man but it also hurts the real victims as they are less likely to be believed. If these women knew there were severe consequences to face, they wouldn't be so quick to point the finger.
Rape victim mistakenly identifies innocent man and his life is destroyed. And you're focusing on her? Let's be clear. She sent an innocent man to prison. No apology. Nothing. Even worse, ther real rapist was in the lineup/photos. In fact, her first question to him is wondering if he's going to hurt her family??? Nothing about him or what she did to his life and family.
this makes me furious,lifes hard,people go through various horrible things,this woman is selfish and should be locked up for 23 years for know reason
This article does not tell the complete story. Three weeks after the assault, the real person was arrested by another suburb on an unrelated charge. In his bookin photo, he resembled McGowan. As for 'Justiceseeker's' comments....are you projecting your own desires into a group of men that have more integrity, forgiveness and class, than you? Are you even permitted to be on a computer?
I think think someone should tie her up and every exonerated convict should get to fuck her. Bonus pay! What a Bitch.
The very headline of this piece re-indicts recently freed, wrongly-accused, not guilty men.
Everyone involved in the authorship and publication of this article is a piece of shit.
Why cover this story with the underlying assumption that the man that was DNA tested and released, because of the DNA results, is guilty? That man is innocent. The victim need to receive counseling and then she need to keep it real. She cost an innocent man thirty years of his life that he cannot get back. Did you notice something familiar about this case? I noticed that the victim, was a white female, that accused a black man of raping her. Do you know how many innocent black men have lost their lives, in the last century, because some white female lied and said he raped her? No, because there are too many to name. I am glad that another innocent man is walking free. And I am glad that there are people who work for the criminal justice system, to do justice for all, Like Dallas D.A Craig Wallace.
I'm sure the race issue was addressed in the story by the victim pretty eloquently. And I'm even more sure that the D.A. of Dallas County is not Craig Wallace.
I can't even count the number of tired-ass racial tropes in this piece. An innocent Black man gets a quarter-century of his life STOLEN from him and you choose to focus on the FEELINGS of the white lady who put his innocent butt behind bars? Yeah, that's a real sophisticated understanding of justice. As a rape survivor myself, supporting rape survivors and preventing sexual assault are pretty damn important to me. But even I think this piece is total hackwork.
Yeah, what the hell? 20+ years in prison unjustly accused of a crime isn't enough? You have to re-victimize a man after? I understand the rape victim has issues, but what happens if the man you accused was raped in the prison that you sent him? Possibly in an even more violent fashion, maybe multiple times, by multiple attackers? What happens if he'd developed HIV in prison?
Money from the state's nice, but no apology from the person who ruined a life? "Oh, oops!"
Corley, too, bristles at the suggestion that the lineup was deliberately misleading. "Some of the photos were black and white and some of them were color," he says, "but that didn't concern me."
This man is not very smart, is he? I mean, he doesn't have the capacity for complex thought, correct?
Why does he think that police have long been trained to find similar-looking people to put in line-ups? Because you want them to recognize the person not pick someone who stands out because they look different.
And if one picture is a mugshot and the others are a mixture of color and black-and-white snapshots, you've failed Line-Up 101. Sure, we know a lot more now about memory and suggestibility, but we knew at the time that you put six similar looking people together so none stand out as different.
I'll take his word that he didn't do it on purpose, but if he had the capacity to think, he'd have known better back then.
It's very sad to me that a person who shouldn't be trusted to assistant manage the night shift at an off-brand McDonald's was for so long entrusted with people's lives as a police officer (and is now a chief).
The state didn't come and give me $2 million and say we're sorry this happened to you.
Well, you know, the only reason exonerees get money is because the state committed the offense against them, and (in the past) it was believed that these various police departments who put the wrong people in prison would be sued and end up having to pay millions out of their own budgets, potentially curtailing their ability to prevent crimes in the future.
Given that Debbie Whatever was complicit in the state's crime against the exoneree (if not for her testimony, they would not have arrested and tried the wrong man), the state's compensation plan is just as much protecting her as it is the police departments and prosecutors who got the wrong guy. She didn't mean to pick the wrong guy, and state didn't mean to send the wrong guy to prison. But that's what they did (drunk drivers don't mean kill people in DWI accidents, but they do).
It's horrible that she got raped, and I'm sure it is very, very tough to deal with. But I imagine having someone lie about you (however unwittingly) and send you to prison for a very long time is probably pretty tough, too. One of the parties who wronged the exoneree is paying him to try to make up for their wrongful prosecution. The person who wronged Debbie Whatever is the man who actually raped her, however. If she thinks $2 million will make her life all better, then she needs to talk to him about it.
I wonder if she feels like she should compensate the additional rape victims that the man who actually raped her was able to commit after she sent the police after the wrong guy? They're going through terrible trauma, too. Trauma that could have been avoided had the police not settled on the wrong guy thanks to her mistaken ID.
(Also, I like that the person who couldn't remember who raped her can somehow remember something that was supposedly said to her a quarter century ago. We're supposed to trust her memory when her faulty memory is what caused the wrongful conviction in the first place).
yeah, yeah, but she finally owned up when the real culprit was IDed. It just took that long for her to get past the initial shock. I have sisters and a daughter... can't imagine the pain there. Especially when the eyewitness testimony was given so much weight
but this shows the hole in that type of testimony. Long known to be weakest of all evidence, but cops and prosecutors are lazy, and want convictions, so guess what happens.
Don't the Brownswood citizens feel safe, eh wot?
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"Thomas, he's out, he's leading his life," she explains. "But with a rape victim, it just never goes anywhere. The state didn't come and give me $2 million and say we're sorry this happened to you."
What. The. Hell. -obligatory condolences--> I feel super sorry for this lady and i can't even begin to imagine the enormous sense of violation/despair felt by a rape victim. Truly. I hope she can find peace.
--back to that quote--But seriously what the hell? She should never compare her tragedy with Thomas'. EVER. If she simply expounded on her struggles, mental and physical, after the trauma that befell her I wouldn't take umbrage. But saying that quote above is destestable.
Sure, Thomas is out, AFTER 23 years in prison. 23 years in prison changes a man. Even more so an innocent man--loses all faith in 'the system' and society in general. "it just never goes anywhere" applies to both you and him.
And her last statement in that quote, DEAR GOD LADY! No one gave you $2 million dollars for being raped. The state DID say 'we're sorry this happened to you' and the article reads as if that cop was amazing at helping you deal with this terrible trauma. If you think $2 million dollars makes life any easier for the poor man you falsely accused think again.
so disgusting for her to think 'yeah Thomas is fine! Me? Oh I'm still suffering.'
jonathan lee riches sued george zimmerman keith judd for $ 3 million dollars..jonathan lee riches was released from prison on april 30th, 2012
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Very unfortunate for almost all the parties involved (except the actual rapists) but unfortunately eye witness identifications are wrong as often as they are right if not more so, especially from a victim under stress. I just wish the statute of limitation laws would be done away with for all crimes. Right now it's like a contest, go undetected long enough, get away with your crime.
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