DP in Texas



May 9

TEXAS:

Dallas County district attorney a hero to the wrongfully convicted----Craig
Watkins both seeks the death penalty in Dallas County and uses DNA evidence to
exonerate those wrongfully convicted. His family's history helps drive him.

On the way to witness his 1st execution in the town known as the "Execution
Capital of the World," the Dallas County district attorney stopped at the
prison cemetery to find his great-grandfather's grave.

Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery in Huntsville is the final resting place of inmates
whose families could not afford burial anywhere else. Tall pines guard the
grassy expanse nicknamed "Peckerwood Hill," where many gravestones bear prison
identification numbers, not names.

Dist. Atty. Craig Watkins scanned row upon row of gray crosses and headstones,
making quick progress in his usual cowboy boots until he found the boxy stone
belonging to Richard Johnson, dated Aug. 10, 1932.

Watkins knelt beside the grave in his suit.

Engraved next to Johnson's prisoner number — 101 — was a telltale X. His
great-grandfather had been executed.

His dual missions that day in February — paying respects, witnessing the
execution — embodied how Watkins, Texas' first African American district
attorney, grapples with his role in meting out justice.

Although morally opposed to capital punishment — he calls it "an archaic form
of justice" — Watkins has sought the death penalty in 9 cases, obtaining it in
8. He requested to see this execution, ordered before he took office, to fully
experience the criminal justice system.

Even as he enforces the law, Watkins cites evidence of a flawed system. He has
emerged as a leader in a growing national movement to exonerate wrongly
convicted prisoners, most of them black men.

"As an African American, you always have a doubt about the criminal justice
system," he said.

A few days after Watkins, then 38, was elected to his 1st term in 2006, a
Dallas police officer stopped him in his black $100,000 Mercedes G500 SUV.

"Whose car is this?" the officer asked.

Watkins, who at 6-foot-4 is imposing even when seated, explained that he was
the new district attorney.

"He had this surprised look on his face," Watkins said.

*

Watkins says people often assume he grew up poor in the slums of south Dallas.
He actually grew up in the middle-class Oak Cliff neighborhood, the son of
teachers.

But he did have relatives who ran afoul of the law. When he visited the
Huntsville prison as the district attorney, he was startled to recognize a
visitor's room. He had sat there as a child, waiting to see an incarcerated
uncle.

Watkins did not set out to right wrongs when he entered historically black
Prairie View A&M University as an engineering major. A political science class
and politically active relatives — an uncle was a four-term president of the
local NAACP chapter — inspired him to go into public service.

He earned his degree in political science, went to Texas Wesleyan University
School of Law and thought working as a prosecutor would lay the foundation for
a political career.

When the Dallas district attorney's office rejected him three times — he's not
sure why — Watkins worked for the public defender and city attorney instead.

In 2002, still a fledgling lawyer with a wife and young children, Watkins
decided to run against Dist. Atty. Bill Hill. He lost, but garnered 48% of the
vote.

4 years later, Hill announced he would not seek reelection. Instead, Watkins
this time faced off against a prosecutor with more than 20 years' experience.
His great-grandfather's story remained secret, as critics focused on his age
and charged that he was too much of a novice to handle a staff of 250 lawyers
and an annual budget of $36 million.

A backlash against then-President George W. Bushswept Republicans from power in
the Dallas area and helped Watkins eke out a victory with 51% of the vote.

His first week in office, Watkins made two decisions that would change the
course of his career.

Dallas is one of few cities that stores forensic evidence dating back to 1969,
when the crime lab was created followingPresident Kennedy's assassination. But
storing evidence costs money, and county leaders asked him to start destroying
old evidence.

He refused.

That same week, Watkins heard that a prisoner convicted under a previous
district attorney was being exonerated based on DNA evidence. Watkins attended
the hearing, and a reporter happened to be there.

"I apologized to the guy, the reporter wrote a story and it just caught fire —
a D.A. will admit that they're wrong!" Watkins recalled.

Suddenly, activists were calling him about other problematic cases. A member of
his staff suggested starting a unit to investigate suspect convictions.

Watkins hesitated. He thought about his nascent political career. He had
planned so carefully.

"I was under so much scrutiny, not just this office but the outside — the media
— thinking, 'He's not qualified.' "

But if he didn't do it, who would?

He persuaded county leaders to spend about $450,000 to create the country's
first conviction integrity unit: two prosecutors, an investigator and a
paralegal.

By the time the unit started work in 2007, 400 prisoners convicted in Dallas
County had appealed under a 2001 state law to have their DNA tested against
evidence.

Start there, Watkins said.

The unit began reviewing cases and sharing files with the New York-based
Innocence Project, the Innocence Project of Texas in Lubbock and defense
attorneys. Based on DNA tests, it appeared there were potential problems with
about half the cases, but it would take time to fully investigate.

By the time Watkins was up for reelection in 2010, his unit had helped
exonerate about a dozen prisoners. Though critics complained he was
thin-skinned, that he squabbled unnecessarily with county leaders, the
exonerations proved popular and he was reelected by the same slim margin.

Just a year earlier at a family reunion, Watkins had noticed a binder full of
information about his great-grandfather. Growing up he'd heard vague comments
about the execution but did not know details — how Johnson had walked to the
electric chair singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." He read how Johnson had been
convicted of murdering a white Fort Worth man by an all-white jury that
deliberated for less than 40 minutes.

But Watkins didn't reveal his family's secret until February, a few days before
witnessing the execution in Huntsville. He brought it up after attending an
exoneration hearing for Richard Miles, a black man who spent 14 years behind
bars for a murder and attempted murder he didn't commit.

"People don't know," Watkins said, "that my great-grandfather was executed by
this state. And so that's an issue we need to explore, as it relates to our
justice system. Are we doing the right thing?"

A flurry of questions followed: Did Watkins think his great-grandfather was
wrongfully convicted? (He'd read the trial transcript and had doubts about his
guilt.) Did he now oppose the death penalty? (He still had reservations but
would apply it.)

"What's really different about Craig Watkins is it is rare for a public
official to have a public dialogue and admit he's not sure of aspects of the
system," said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Austin-based Texas
Defender Service.

So far, Watkins' office has helped exonerate 25 inmates, including 2 men last
week, all prosecuted under predecessors. Both had received life sentences for a
1983 rape and shooting. 7 other men exonerated under Watkins were serving life
terms as well. Still, in cases prosecuted by his office, the conviction rate is
99.4%.

Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, said prosecutors have long
feared that exposing wrongful convictions will undermine public confidence in
their work. "Craig has proven that exactly the opposite happens," Scheck said.
"If you become known as the district attorney's office that has a conviction
integrity unit, if you bring a case before a jury, they will trust you more."

Now district attorneys from Manhattan to Santa Clara have followed Watkins'
example and started similar units. The district attorney in Houston, a
Republican former police officer, also launched one.

Watkins' approach still alarms some prosecutors. John Bradley, a Republican
district attorney in Williamson County, outside Austin, thinks such units are
unnecessary because prosecutors already dedicate staff to appeals and DNA
analysis, and he has told Watkins so via email.

"We have conviction integrity every time we receive and screen a case," Bradley
said. "We need to be investing all we can in how we do our job now so we will
be less likely to have them reviewed in the future."

This spring, Watkins was at the Dallas crime lab watching from the back as the
head of the conviction integrity unit explained its mission to members of the
D.A.'s first citizens academy, which teaches residents how the office works.

Prosecutor Russell Wilson flipped to a photograph of Charles Allen Chatman,
convicted of aggravated rape in 1981 and sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Chatman refused parole because it would have meant admitting guilt. With help
from Watkins' office, he was granted new DNA testing.

"The test results excluded him and he was exonerated," Wilson said, "And he's
here tonight."

The audience of about 40 gasped and erupted in applause as a burly man in a
blue dress shirt rose from their midst, shaved head gleaming, and approached
the microphone. Chatman, 51, had been imprisoned for 26 years.

A hush fell over the room. Chatman looked to the back of the room, to the now
familiar tall figure in suit and cowboy boots.

"I took care of myself in jail," Chatman said. "I never thought I'd say another
man was my hero. But this man right here is my hero."

(source: Los Angeles Times)