For his first day back "in the world" as a free man after nearly 17 years, Brandon Moon made sure he was dressed in blue, his favorite color, carrying a white cowboy hat, symbol of all Western good guys. He wore the horsehair belt a fellow prison craftsman made at his request and a belt buckle of his own design, an Eye of God cross embellished in nickel, brass and copper and set with a zircon stone.
Shown by DNA testing to have been wrongly convicted of rape in 1988, Moon was released from prison at a court hearing here on Tuesday afternoon -- the latest among 154 men and women in the US exonerated by such tests.
Moon and his parents were in the packed courtroom to hear the El Paso district attorney, Jaime Esparza, apologize for the wrongful conviction, for himself and for the state of Texas.
With them were Barry Scheck, a lawyer from New York, whose 12-year-old Innocence Project has accounted for more than half of those exonerated, and another lawyer from Scheck's office, Nina Morrison.
"I know we can't give you back your years," Esparza said, "and for that I'm extremely sorry."
Moon responded, "I accept your apology."
The El Paso case suggested that Texas' crime laboratory scandals are not limited to Houston, where two other convicted Texans were exonerated earlier and two grand juries have investigated tainted evidence after a landmark DNA testing statute passed in 2001 by the Texas Legislature.
In the courtroom, Scheck said he would ask for an audit of all cases using evidence from the Department of Public Safety's former "expert" on serology, or serums, Glen David Adams, whose incorrect scientific results helped to convict Moon on three counts of aggravated sexual assault, resulting in a 75-year sentence, and sample checks of other crime laboratory evidence.
Adams worked at the Lubbock crime laboratory from 1986 to 1991. The department said that his whereabouts now were unknown.
Scheck also called for pilot programs in eyewitness identification, citing mistaken identity as the "single greatest cause of innocents being convicted."
In Moon's case, the prosecution presented eyewitness testimony from the rape victim herself and three other women whose rapes followed a similar pattern. The rape victim picked out Moon from a photograph and police lineup, in which he was the only blue-eyed white male, a full 18 months after the attack.
Scheck and Morrison both praised their client's efforts from prison to act as his own lawyer but said his pleas for DNA testing were fully heard only after the Innocence Project got involved last May and had a semen-stained bathrobe and a comforter from the bed where the rape took place re-examined.
Moon, now 43, was "bounced around the courts like a Ping-Pong ball," Morrison said. "We only came in at the ninth inning." Counting the years, Moon said in an interview on Sunday before his release that he felt as if he had played for 17 innings -- "it was a very long game."
"The courts are so hostile to pro se litigants," Morrison said. "The instinct is to deny, deny, deny." Still, after DNA results established Moon's innocence, "it took less than a week" for Esparza "to do the right thing," she added.
Moon, a four-year Army veteran, had been a sophomore student at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1987 when he was arrested on the rape charge. A member of the Air Force ROTC, he had hoped to become a "lifer" in the Air Force and fly fighter jets after his graduation.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of