DNA clears Houston man 27 years after conviction - Chron.com
A Houston man prosecutors now say is innocent is expected to be freed this week after serving more than 27 years in prison — the longest time behind bars of any Texan who has been exonerated — for a rape he did not commit.
Michael Anthony Green, 45, is expected to be in court Thursday where his attorney, Bob Wicoff, will ask that he be freed on bail while the case moves forward.
If freed, Green would be the eighth local man let out of prison in recent years, and the second in a week, after serving time for a crime he did not convict.
“He is innocent,” Wicoff said. “We’ve got the bad guys too. We’ve pegged the bad guys.”
Green was sentenced to 75 years in prison for the 1983 rape of a Houston woman based on faulty eyewitness identification, Wicoff said.
Officers were in the area looking for a black car that had been stolen. When police pulled the car over with the four suspects, black males, they all fled.
Police began stopping all black males walking in the area and detained Green, who is black. Green and another man were left in a police car that night, illuminated by headlights, while the victim was brought to the scene where she saw both and said neither assaulted her, according to court records.
However, police showed the victim a photo line up that included Green eight days later and she picked him out. Later that day, she picked him out of a live lineup.
Four months later, after seeing him three times, the victim identified him in court. He was the only person convicted of the crime, according the district attorney’s office.
Wicoff blamed police for the false eyewitness identification.
“DNA freed this guy. Bad police work put him away,” Wicoff said. “This was HPD’s fault.”