DNA, Can it Really Grant Freedom?

As arbitrary as the death penalty itself, who gets freedom from exclusionary DNA and who does not, depends on the prosecutor and the judge. In Texas where the best DNA statutes in the country exist, that is the truth and not fiction.

In the case of Charles Raby on death row for the 1992 murder of a grandmother in her home, DNA evidence from under the victims nails exclude him as the donor. Curiously, that was true in 1994 during the case against Raby, but the jury heard "the results were inconclusive" from Joseph Chu. In fact as infantile as DNA testing was at that time, the results showed blood types that only matched the victim and someone other than Raby.

If the name Joseph Chu sounds familiar it should. In 2002 the lab where Chu was an analyst, made headline news when a scandal broke, and Chu took a beating in the Michael Bromwich reports for "manipulating results to help with convictions". Deetrice Wallace, the Houston Police Department Chemist,(in the same lab) who also did some work on the Raby case, was indicted last year for forging breathalyzer inspection records.

So what keeps the Prosecutor and the Judge from freeing Charles Raby? He confessed. According to the Innocence Project 25 percent of DNA exonerees have "made incriminating statements, delivered outright confessions, or plead guilty".

In a recent letter, Charles claims that he confessed "to spare his girlfriend from being charged with aiding and abetting" a threat the homicide detectives "made clear to me". He has of course recanted his confession. According to the Prosecution, he (Raby) isn't even in the ballpark of showing innocence. If that is the case then Christopher Ochoa who confessed to the crime of murder to avoid a death sentence should still be fighting his case. Thankfully, Christopher Ochoa, and the person his testimony sent to death row, Richard Danzinger are free. Thankfully the real killer was identified, that was of course years before the exoneration. It took identifying the real killer, and DNA to free these two innocent men. Danzinger suffered a severe beating in prison that has left him unable to care for himself.

Charles Raby does not know who the real killer is, he just knows it can't be him. "It just doesn't feel right" he says. "I don't feel like I have killed anyone". Charles admits he was drunk the night of the murder and blacked out, with no real memory of what happened. Lab tests on the clothing he wore the night of the murder have turned up no blood evidence, and this was a gruesome bloody crime scene.

The DNA profiles that have been uncovered through the new testing could be put through the states database, but likely won't, and Charles Raby in spite of the evidence that the jury would never hear, will likely be executed.