Free At Last

My biggest question is why he didn't get the death penalty?

A Dallas man who spent more than 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit was freed Tuesday, after being incarcerated longer than any other wrongfully convicted U.S. inmate cleared by DNA testing

James Lee Woodard stepped out of the courtroom and raised his arms to a throng of photographers. Supporters and other people gathered outside the court erupted in applause.

"No words can express what a tragic story yours is," state District Judge Mark Stoltz told Woodard at a brief hearing before his release.

Woodard, cleared of the 1980 murder of his girlfriend, became the 18th person in Dallas County to have his conviction cast aside. That's a figure unmatched by any county nationally, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions.

The Innocence Project strikes again, and strikes in Texas yet again (31 of their exonerations have been in Texas, highest in the nation). How in the world anyone can support the death penalty with these kinds of statistics is beyond me. You know the innocence project isn't getting all of the innocent people freed, just like you know that the courts don't get all the guilty convicted.

But hey, silly me. Don't expect to hear much about this elsewhere. After all we have the far more important issues like Reverend Wright 24/7 on cable and Miley Cyrus's back everywhere else.