Texas prosecutors agreed on Monday to release an Austin man who spent nearly 25 years in prison for beating his wife to death — but always maintained his innocence — after DNA tests showed another man was responsible.
District Judge Sid Harle recommended Michael Morton go free to the state Court of Criminal Appeals, which will make the final determination on overturning his conviction. Morton was set to be released either yesterday afternoon or this morning, following a final hearing before Harle.
The case will likely raise more questions about John Bradley, district attorney for Williamson County and once a Texas Governor Rick Perry appointee to head the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Bradley criticized the commission’s investigation of the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 after being convicted of arson in the deaths of his three children. Experts have since concluded that case’s forensic science was faulty.
The Innocence Project, a New York-based organization that specializes in using DNA testing to overturn wrongful convictions, has accused Bradley of suppressing evidence that would have helped clear Morton, who was convicted on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to life in prison for his wife’s August 1986 death after being beaten.
Bradley said in court on Monday that he wasn’t involved in the original trial and urged the public to “recall that prosecutors are called upon to do justice ... that we are searching for the fair solution.”
Prosecutors had alleged that Morton became enraged after his wife refused to have sex with him following a dinner celebrating his 32nd birthday.
However, tests performed this summer on a blood-stained, blue bandana found shortly after the crime near Morton’s home revealed DNA from his wife and an unidentified man convicted in multiple states, including California. Authorities have withheld his identity amid ongoing investigations.
Nina Morrison, an attorney for the Innocence Project, told Harle’s court on Monday that Morton testified during his 1987 trial and said an intruder must have bludgeoned his wife to death after he left her and the couple’s three-year-old son at 5am for his job at a grocery store. Morrison said the bandana was discovered 100m from the Morton home, along a route consistent with the one Morton said the intruder used to break in.
Morrison said DNA testing techniques that weren’t yet available during the original trial proved the bandana contained blood from another man — and that DNA evidence also linked that man to a similar 1988 slaying in Austin committed after Morton was already behind bars.
Authorities are now investigating whether that man was responsible for the slaying of Debra Jan Baker, who was beaten to death in her bed. According to local media reports, cold case investigators are examining the possibility that the man may have been a serial killer who operated in the Austin area in the 1980s.
Morrison also said there were six instances where prosecutors and investigators hid non-DNA evidence that could have exonerated Morton from his defense attorney during the original trial.
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