" But his conviction was based on eye witness accounts and no physical evidence. Through the years, some of the witnesses have walked back their testimony and doubts have emerged about the case."
In my opinion why would numerous Eye Witness' testify in the original trial and have the man convicted if they didn't see him do it? It was 22 years ago and I think that some of them have clouded memories due to time. As stated earlier 10 witness' saw it happen and now they say they didn't? It doesn't make any sense.
That is why they shouldn't let these things drag on for 20+ years.
Eye witness testimony is the WORST form of evidence. Its also the easiest for police to manipulate.
There was a case in west Texas, where the eye witness who wasn't even at the crime scene at the time she said she was still believes she was there and saw the suspects.
It took 15 years for the two guys to get released. They won on ineffective counsel, even though there was plenty of evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct(photo line ups with just 1 photo, failing to give defense evidence of a shoe print at the scene that was exculpatory). They had 30+ day long civil suit which they ultimately lost. They aren't receiving compensation from Texas because the DA was a coward instead of having a new trial which would have been dismissed, he sought a new indictment knowing full well what he was doing. He got a no bill which means they were never legally exonerated, even though all the evidence shows they weren't the ones that committed the crime.
West Texas based on its population, has an extremely high rate of death penalty exonerations.
I got a little off track. But again, eye witness testimony is terrible, unreliable, and easily manipulated. There are plenty of scientific studies that show this.
We do not know the full story in this case but since it was so long ago, I can easily assume the police manipulated the eye witnesses. It happened all the fucking time back then.
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