Texas Governor Rick Perry has issued a pardon on the basis of innocence to Josiah Sutton, a juvenile offender who had served four years of a 25-year prison term before new DNA tests proved his innocence. The faulty DNA results used to convict Sutton in 1998 were processed by the now thoroughly discredited Houston Police Department crime lab, the same facility that processed DNA and other forensic evidence used in cases that have resulted in death sentences. The lab was shut down in 2003 after questions about the quality and accuracy of its analysis surfaced. Sutton’s case is one of almost 400 cases being revisited by private labs to check the Houston crime labs’ work. “Based on the DNA testing, court determination and unanimous decision of the (Texas Pardons and Paroles) board, it was the appropriate – and only – decision,” said Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt. (Houston Chronicle, May 14, 2004) See Innocence.