Eighteen peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed of seri­ous vio­lent crimes from a sin­gle Texas coun­ty through DNA-test­ing in recent years. James Woodward was the lat­est per­son to be freed from con­fine­ment from Dallas County. He spent 27 years in prison for the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of rap­ing and mur­der­ing his girl­friend in 1981. Statewide in Texas there have been 30 such exon­er­a­tions. As a par­tial response, state Senator Rodney Ellis has called for a sum­mit on inno­cence to take place on May 8, begin­ning in the Texas Senate cham­ber. Sen. Ellis said, ​“We’ve reached a tip­ping point on wrong­ful con­vic­tions in Texas. Nobody can seri­ous­ly doubt that there’s a prob­lem, and next week lead­ers from across our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem will come togeth­er to start solv­ing it.“

Criminal jus­tice reforms to pre­vent peo­ple from being wrong­ly con­vict­ed may include improv­ing indi­gent defense, tak­ing steps to ensure that eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is reli­able and video­tap­ing con­fes­sions, Ellis said. Some of those who have been exon­er­at­ed will attend the sum­mit, along with judges, pros­e­cu­tors, police and law­mak­ers .
(J. Elliott, ​“Exonerations prompt forum on con­vic­tions,” Houston Chronicle, April 30, 2008). Although James Woodward did not receive the death penal­ty for his con­vic­tion, Texas leads the coun­try in death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions. Texas has exe­cut­ed 405 peo­ple since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in 1976. See Innocence.

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