You Have the Right to Remain Innocent by James Duane

Author:James Duane [Duane, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Little A
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A few years ago, Michael Morton was released from a Texas prison where he had spent almost twenty-five years of a life sentence for a crime that he did not commit.83 He was released after it was discovered that a corrupt prosecutor had failed to turn over evidence to Morton’s lawyers that would have been extremely helpful to the defense, including DNA evidence that practically proved his innocence. The prosecution had virtually no evidence against Morton at all, except for truthful information that he shared voluntarily with the police.

The last time Morton ever saw his wife alive, she was sleeping in their bed when he left for work. Several hours later, while she was home alone with their young son, someone broke into the house and brutally murdered her. There was also evidence that she had been sexually assaulted. But there was never any eyewitness or physical evidence to suggest that Morton had committed the crime. In fact, their son—who saw the murder—later told the police that the killer was not his father, but a man he called “a monster.” The police and the prosecutor never gave that information to Morton or his lawyers.

When Morton heard about the crime, of course, he was devastated. He instinctively, foolishly, made the terrible decision to talk to the police and tell them the answer to everything they asked him about. By the time they were done with their investigation, they had no direct evidence connecting him to the crime, no witness or physical evidence to prove his guilt. In fact, they had nothing against him at all, except for unfortunate coincidences and ambiguous circumstances that he had willingly shared.

For example, Morton admitted to the police that the night before the murder, he and his wife had been in a little argument.84 It had been his birthday, and he was disappointed that she had fallen asleep before they could engage in some romantic intimacy. In fact, he had actually left her a handwritten note in their bathroom before he left for work the next morning, expressing his disappointment with that fact. In the opinion of the prosecutor, and then the jury, and then the Texas Supreme Court, this evidence was the most important evidence against Morton, because it showed his supposed motive to commit the crime. There were many other details that Morton gave the police—truthful answers from an innocent man—that were also used to help convict him. For example, when the police asked where and when Morton had eaten dinner with his wife the night before, he made a terrible mistake of telling the police the truth. (Why do I say that it was a terrible mistake? Because, just like the information Earl Ruffin gave the police about his former girlfriend, it was information that could not possibly help his defense, or help the police identify the true killer.) He revealed to the police that he and his wife had eaten dinner together at a local restaurant at about nine thirty in the evening.

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