A Dallas man who spent near­ly half of his life in prison or on parole for a crime he did not com­mit was recent­ly exon­er­at­ed after DNA evi­dence cleared him of rap­ing a 12-year-old boy in 1982. James Waller is the 12th per­son since 2001 whose con­vic­tion in Dallas County has been over­turned as a result of genet­ic evi­dence. ​“Nowhere else in the nation have so many indi­vid­ual wrong­ful con­vic­tions been proven in one coun­ty in such a short span,” said attor­ney Barry Scheck. Scheck and his col­leagues at the New York-based Innocence Project rep­re­sent­ed Waller dur­ing his most recent efforts to prove his inno­cence.

The case against Waller was large­ly based on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the vic­tim, who mis­tak­en­ly iden­ti­fied Waller as his assailant. Though Waller did not fit the orig­i­nal descrip­tion pro­vid­ed to police by the vic­tim, and ali­bi wit­ness­es said that Waller was home at the time of the crime, he was con­vict­ed in 46 min­utes and sen­tenced to 30 years in jail. He won parole in 1993, but had to reg­is­ter as a sex offend­er. Waller con­tin­ued to fight to prove his inno­cence in the years fol­low­ing his release. On their way to a court pro­ceed­ing in 2001, Waller and his preg­nant wife were involved in a car acci­dent. The acci­dent took the lives of his wife and his unborn daugh­ter. ​“It has been a long strug­gle for me. They look at you like you’re an ani­mal,” Waller said.

Judge John C. Creuzot of Criminal District Court over­saw Waller’s lat­est hear­ing and tried to con­sole the exon­er­at­ed man by stat­ing, ​“A lot of times we are test­ed in life, and you cer­tain­ly had a ter­ri­ble test. On behalf of any and all pub­lic offi­cials at that time, I want to apol­o­gize.” Craig Watkins, Dallas County’s new dis­trict attor­ney, told Waller that he was ​“sor­ry” and added, ​“I can say I’m sor­ry all day. I know that does­n’t mean much to you, but I can guar­an­tee to you in the future when I’m the dis­trict attor­ney we will insist that we will not send any­one who’s inno­cent to prison. The sad thing is the per­son who actu­al­ly did this crime is still out there on the streets.”

(New York Times, January 18, 2007). Read more about this exon­er­a­tion from the Innocence Project. See Innocence.

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