DALLAS, Texas (CNN) -- James Woodard is slowly returning to
life. He is starting over after spending 27 years behind bars. He was
wrongly imprisoned and cleared by DNA.
Routine chores are a test of endurance when the only identification card in his wallet is issued by the Texas prison system.
With his new friend, Clay Graham of the Innocence Project of Texas,
serving as his guide and driver, Woodard is on the hunt for the basics
of everyday life.
When he went off to prison, Ronald Reagan was
president, gas was cheap, AIDS was barely on the radar and no one had a
cell phone or a personal computer.
"It's sort of like waking up
from a dream," Woodard said, walking through the corridors of Dallas
City Hall, trying to track down his birth certificate. "When you first
wake up you are first kind of groggy and then as time passes you get
more coherent."
He may be free, but he doesn't have his life
back yet -- or even proof of his life. He crisscrosses the city looking
for the birth certificate.
He can't open a bank account with a prison-issued I.D. He can't get a
state I.D. card without a birth certificate or Social Security card.
It's not easy starting over. Woodard calls it an "adventure."
Woodard was convicted of raping and murdering his girlfriend in 1981
and sentenced to life in prison. He was released on April 29, the 17th Dallas County inmate to be exonerated by DNA testing.
In one aspect at least, Woodard and the 16 others are lucky; the
evidence that freed them was preserved even after their appeals were
exhausted and the courts finalized their convictions. If they had been
tried in a county or city that has no preservation laws, the DNA to
clear them would have been destroyed long ago.
But more and more
counties and states are passing laws for evidence preservation,
according to the Innocence Project, practicing what Dallas County has
long been doing.
The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy
organization, based in New York, dedicated to exonerating wrongfully
convicted people through DNA testing. Its Texas branch has been
instrumental in handling the Dallas cases.
Since 2001, Dallas County has had more DNA exonerations than any other county in the nation.
For years, Woodard wrote letters to the prosecutors from his prison
cell begging and pleading for help. Woodard says he never gave up hope.
"A man gives up hope, he gives up his life. You can't never give up hope," Woodard said.
But bad luck -- or maybe even bad faith -- put Woodard in prison in the
first place. Woodard's attorney says prosecutors in the Dallas County
district attorney's office sat on information that could have kept
Woodard out of prison.
The jury believed Woodard was the last
person seen with the victim. But according to court records, there were
two other men that were with her. Police never followed up on the lead
and prosecutors never shared the information with defense attorneys,
even though they were legally obligated to do so.
Dallas
District Attorney Craig Watkins is on a mission to right the wrongs of
the past. He's suggesting that it's time to start prosecuting the
prosecutors to keep innocent people like James Woodard from going to
prison.
"When individuals intend to cause a person to be convicted for a crime
they did not commit, that's an embarrassment for our profession,"
Watkins said during an interview at his office inside the Dallas
courthouse.
Watkins says the prosecutor who handled Woodard's
case deserves prison time. CNN made several attempts to reach the
prosecutor involved. He did not return our calls.
Because it's
unlikely that any of the prosecutors would face prison time under
existing law, Watkins said, he wants to make it a crime from now on for
prosecutors to knowingly hide or suppress evidence that could help a
defendant.
"In order for us to have credibility with people and jurors and citizens I believe we had to take on this fight," he said.
Watkins' comments are sending shock waves through the Dallas legal
community. Many of the prosecutors who handled the exonerated criminal
cases have moved on to lucrative careers in private practice.
But many former prosecutors say the idea of criminalizing prosecutors'
mistakes will have a chilling effect on the justice system.
"You need to be careful before you start saying 'Let's throw them in jail,'" said Robert Rogers, a former Dallas prosecutor.
Critics of Watkins' idea say the threat of criminal charges will drive
people away from becoming prosecutors because they'd be afraid an
honest mistake could cost them their careers, or even jail. But James
Woodard thinks that kind of fear would make prosecutors think twice.
The only time James Woodard sounds angry about his experience,
spending half of his life in prison, is when he talks about the man who
prosecuted him.
"I think he should pay a penalty. I paid 27 years," Woodard said. "He
took my life away from me. What's the difference if it's by a gun, by
words or by lies. What's gone is gone."
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