Former death row inmate Michael Toney was freed from prison in Texas on September 2 after the state’s Attorney General asked that his death sen­tence and crim­i­nal charges be dis­missed. Toney was sen­tenced to death for a fatal bomb­ing in 1985 that occurred at a trail­er park in Lake Worth. He has always main­tained his inno­cence, and there was no phys­i­cal evi­dence lead­ing to his con­vic­tion. His con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were over­turned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals nine months ago after it was revealed that the state had with­held crit­i­cal evi­dence that might have led the jury to a dif­fer­ent con­clu­sion at his tri­al in 1999. The attor­ney gen­er­al took over the case after the Tarrant County dis­trict attor­ney’s office recused itself in January because of the withheld evidence.

The state has reserved the right to con­tin­ue its inves­ti­ga­tion and to retry Toney if war­rant­ed. The lead pros­e­cu­tor in the 1999 tri­al, Mike Parrish, left the dis­trict attor­ney’s office last year. In an inter­view in December 2008, Toney said of the pros­e­cu­tion, ​“They had blind­ers on. Once they thought they could con­vict some­one, inno­cence didn’t matter.”

(A. Branch, ​“Defendant freed, nine months after con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were over­turned,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Sept. 3, 2009). See Innocence. Because of the state’s active inves­ti­ga­tion and pos­si­bil­i­ty of a new tri­al, Michael Toney’s case has not yet been added to the list of those exon­er­at­ed from death row.

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