Thanks to hundreds of DNA exonerations, experts now know false confessions are common. That wasn’t the case in the nineties in Texas.
Since 1980, police and an army of amateur sleuths have puzzled over the East Texas cold case. New forensic DNA techniques have finally given a name to the teenage girl whose brutal murder has haunted so many for so long.
Thirty-seven men, 525 years behind bars for crimes they didn’t commit. Thanks to DNA testing, their claims of innocence have finally been proved—but what happens to them now?
How the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals mistakes toughness for fairness—and gives the state a black eye.
What weighs 32,000 pounds and is more than thirty feet tall? The largest DNA in the state.
For that matter, why can’t any incarcerated man or woman with a good reason get one?
Although they hate to let anyone get away with murder, Harris County detectives Harry Fikaris and Roger Wedgeworth are finding that cracking unsolved cases is no easy task.
On the strength of a simple if indelicate question—“Who’s the Father?”—Houston’s Caroline Caskey has made a big splash in biotech.
George W. Bush pardoned convicted rapist Kevin Byrd after DNA evidence proved he was the wrong man. How did he get sent to prison in the first place?
Smoking out the truth.
