Texas: DNA evidence ignored and nearly destroyed by the prosecution, did they kill an innoncent man?

For over two decades, the hair was stored in a plastic evidence bag in the courthouse in Coldspring, Texas, cataloged as belonging to Claude Jones, who was convicted of murder in 1990 and executed 10 years later. Now, it can be relabeled: a court-ordered DNA test found Thursday that the hair actually belonged to the murder victim Allen Hilzendager. The result casts significant doubt on the validity of Jones' conviction and his execution.

That single 1-in. (2.5 cm) strand of hair was the key to Jones' original conviction. A truck carrying Jones and Danny Dixon did pull up in front of Hilzendager's liquor store that night. One man got out, went inside and gunned Hilzendager down, according to two eyewitnesses across the highway (neither could see the murderer's face). Both Jones and Dixon were certainly capable of the crime — both were on parole after serving time for murder. But there was little other firm evidence of which one had done it. Dixon accused Jones, and Jones accused Dixon. The prosecution's star witness against Jones was a friend of Dixon's who later said that prosecutors had coerced him into testifying.

And from the beginning, the evidence was handled questionably. The hair expert at the Texas crime lab originally thought the small sample was "unsuitable for comparison" using the microscopy technology available at the time, but eventually changed his mind and decided to test it after all. Using that outdated technology — which essentially has two hairs examined side by side under a microscope — the expert then determined that the hair belonged to Jones and not Dixon.

In Jones' case, prosecutor Bill Burnett fought hard to destroy the hair before it could be tested, and he took his fight all the way to his grave. The pastor at his funeral in June assailed TIME's coverage of the Jones case, in which I had argued in favor of testing, and lauded Burnett for being someone who "took a stand against some powerful people."


Link: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2031034,00.html?hpt=T2