The incredible work of the Innocence Project of Texas in Dallas County, along with DA Craig Watkins, gained even more attention tonight with a piece on 60 Minutes. I sat, riveted as I watched James Woodard, the 17th man to walk out of jail wrongfully convicted by former DA Henry Wade’s convict-at-all-costs office, learn that he would be freed.
And I wept. I’ll admit it. It was a powerful moment. A volunteer with the Innocence Project that took his file, who wasn’t even born when he was convicted 27 years ago, told him that the DNA evidence cleared him. And there wasn’t a dry eye at the table.
The next day, both the judge and Watkins apologized. The judge said that he wasn’t getting justice, just “the end of injustice.” To add to the insult, Watkins revealed that Wade’s prosecutors also withheld evidence that might have exonerated Woodard all those years ago – his girlfriend, who he was accused of raping and murdering, was also in the company of another man, who was later accused of raping someone else. Watkins has now gone on record as saying he would like to see these prosecutors punished more harshly for these acts, which are costing the the state millions.
Woodard was asked by the interviewer why he didn’t just confess to the crime, so he could be paroled out earlier. His response?
“I wasn’t guilty. I mean a man has to stand for something.”
Clearly a man with a sense of honor. I recently read an article by an Israeli officer who was put in charge of an experimental company of Palestinians in the Israeli Army. He said that a lot of what he had to learn to make things work was the importance of honor and shame in tribal cultures.
Western cultures center around pride and guilt was the author’s claim. These tend to be more individualized and internalized. Honor and shame are more externalized and are group oriented. There is very much a sense that one’s actions reflect on one’s group, especially family, not just one’s self. There is constant pressure to behave with honor.
I think that we all, as the family of America, should feel some shame over this man’s treatment. Obviously, his prosecutor felt none.
This is what the full pursuit of justice looks like, unlike the all too often one-sided collecting of prosecutorial notches as a standard prep for further political pursuits.
Which might be an even greater legacy for the Innocence Project to strive for: changing the scorekeeping by which successful prosecutors are judged to take away more points for wrongly convicted innocents that are awarded for prosecutions of the guilty.
I passed this one to people at work today. Most hadn’t heard about it. Thanks Bethany.
Steve