Apr 30 2009
Houston Man Released From Prison After Possible Wrongful Conviction
In 1987, Gary Alvin Richard was convicted of a Harris County rape and kidnapping and sentenced to life in prison. He has spent the last 22 years incarcerated for that crime. Earlier today, Richard was released from incarceration on a P.R. bond after serological tests proved the inaccuracy of testimony provided by the Houston Police Department’s crime lab supervisor at the time of trial. The Houston Chronicle reports:
More than two decades [after his conviction] Richard received new scrutiny in a review of some 160 cases with questionable HPD blood-typing, or serology, evidence. Lawyers discovered that in Richard’s case HPD analysts had obtained two sets of conflicting results, but reported only conclusions favorable to the prosecution.
They also discovered that the physical evidence collected after the attack, and assembled into a “rape kit,” had been destroyed sometime in the years after Richard’s conviction, eliminating the option of DNA testing to resolve the discrepancy. Lawyers instead ordered less-discriminating serology tests, which analysts at a California lab completed Friday. Those tests suggest Richard is not a match for fluids in the rape kit. Semen from the crime scene displayed no evidence of the attacker’s blood type, meaning he was what is known as a “non-secretor.” The new tests confirm that Richard displays his blood type in his body fluids, or is a secretor who would have been identifiable had he been the source.
[Richard's attorney, Bob] Wicoff has argued that the new tests confirm Richard’s innocence. “The semen evidence from the crime scene indicates that only a non-secretor could have been the source,” Wicoff wrote in an appeal filed Monday. “Richard could not have been the man who kidnapped, robbed and sexually assaulted the (woman).”
Our congratulations goes out to Mr. Richard and his attorney, Bob Wicoff, who is ably representing Richard on his DNA claim. Mr. Wicoff, who serves as a Board member of the Innocence Project of Texas, was appointed by the courts in Harris County to review more than 100 convictions that were potentially tainted by serious errors in serological testing identified during the Bromwich investigation of the Houston Crime Lab.
To read the rest of the Houston Chronicle article, click here.