A Texas man wrongfully convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife was officially exonerated this week. This is a new trend in a state where 45 inmates have already been exonerated in the last decade. With advances in technology and DNA evidence, cases are being reviewed once again.
Michael Morton is cleared of murder after 25 years. Credit: New York Times
What is so unusual about this particular case involving Michael Morton is that the prosecutor in his case is being investigated for withholding evidence. Morton’s lawyers filed a request for a special hearing to determine whether the prosecutor, Ken Anderson, broke state laws or ethics rules by holding back evidence that could have led to Mr. Morton’s acquittal.
“I haven’t seen anything like this, ever,” said Bennet L. Gershman, an expert on prosecutorial misconduct at Pace University in New York. “It’s an extraordinary legal event.” Mr. Anderson is a respected and noted expert on Texas criminal law and is now a district judge. Through his lawyer, Anderson strongly denied any wrongdoing in Morton’s case from some 25 years ago.
Prosecutor in Morton case is now a judge
Morton was a manager at an Austin supermarket and had no criminal history. He was charged with the beating death of his wife, Christine, in 1986. Morton said that he believed the killer must have entered their home after he left for work early in the morning.
Prosecutor Anderson convinced the jury that Mr. Morton was angry that his wife rebuffed a romantic advance the previous night on his 32nd birthday and then killed her in a murderous rage. Morton was sentenced to life in prison. In 2005, Morton requested that the court test DNA found on a blue bandana near his home shortly after his wife’s murder.
The Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley fought the request for DNA testing for six years, based on advice from now Judge Anderson, his predecessory and friend. A Texas court ordered the DNA testing in 2010. The results showed that Morton’s blood was mixed with the DNA of Mark A. Norwood. Mr. Norwood is a felon with a long criminal history who lived 12 miles from the Mortons at the time of the murder.
Mark Norwood has been charged with Mrs. Morton's murder
Norwood was arrested and charged in Mrs. Norton’s murder and also is a suspect in a similar murder from 1988. By the time the DNA testing was ordered, Morton had spent nearly 25 years in prison.
The filing by Mr. Morton’s lawyer, John Raley, and attorneys from the Innocence Project, a group based in New York that represents prisoners seeking exoneration through DNA testing, is asking for what is known as a “court of inquiry.”
Morton’s son: “Monster” killed his mother
The lawyers did not share the document with reporters but answered questions about it. They will ask the court to determine that there is probable cause to believe that Anderson withheld reports that the judge in the 1987 trial had ordered him to turn over.
The judge had demanded the documents to determine whether they might help Mr. Morton’s case. Finding nothing exculpatory in the small number of documents he was provided by the prosecutor, the judge ordered the record sealed.
In August, however, a different judge ordered the record unsealed, and Mr. Morton’s lawyers discovered that Mr. Anderson had provided only a fraction of the available evidence. Missing from the file was the transcript of a telephone conversation between a sheriff’s deputy and Mr. Morton’s mother-in-law in which she reported that her 3-year-old grandson had seen a “monster” — who was not his father — attack and kill his mother.
