Man who spent 30 years in jail for armed robbery is finally proved innocent after DNA test
By David Gardner The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1343902/Cornelius-Dupree-proven-innocent-DNA-test-30-years-jail-armed-robbery.html?ITO=1490
Last updated at 8:56 AM on 5th January 2011
Long wait: Cornelius Dupree's pleas of innocence were finally listened to after 30 years in a Texas prison
A man who has spent 30 years behind bars - protesting his innocence the entire time - will finally get his conviction overturned in court.
Cornelius Dupree, 51, was jailed in 1979 for the rape and armed robbery of a woman in Dallas, Texas. But he has had to wait until now for his record to be wiped clean after DNA tests finally excluded him as the attacker.
He was paroled from his 75-year sentence in July after preliminary test results appeared to prove he could not have carried out the brutal crime.
Now the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office has confirmed that it supports Dupree’s bid to get his record cleansed and will ask a judge to make it official tomorrow.
Dupree spent more time wrongly imprisoned than any other inmate in Texas, which has freed 41 innocent prisoners through genetic testing since 2001.
The large number of wrongful convictions is even more alarming in a state which has the death penalty.
Dupree's 30 years would surpass James Woodard, who spent more than 27 years imprisoned for a murder that he was cleared of in 2008.
About two dozen DNA exonerations have happened in Dallas since 2001, more than any other county in the nation.
Only two states - Illinois and New York - have freed more wrongly convicted prisoners through DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project - a New York-based legal centre representing Dupree that specialises in wrongful conviction cases.
Dallas has managed to revisit more old cases because the county crime lab maintains biological evidence even decades after a conviction, leaving samples available to test.
Home free: Mr Dupree at home with his wife Selma Perkins Dupree. A court hearing tomorrow will finally exonerate the 51-year-old of armed robbery
In addition, District Attorney Craig Watkins has cooperated with innocence groups in reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates for DNA testing.
Watkins, the first black DA in Texas history, has also pointed to what he calls ‘a convict-at-all-costs mentality’ that he says permeated the prosecutor’s office before he arrived three years ago.
The DNA testing also excluded a second defendant, Anthony Massingill, who was subsequently convicted in another sexual assault case and sentenced to life in prison.
Massingill remains in jail but maintains his innocence. DNA testing in that second case is ongoing.
Craig Watkins: Dallas's first black district attorney is fighting against a 'convict-at-all-costs mentality'
Dupree was charged in 1979 with raping and robbing a 26-year-old woman and sentenced in 1980 to 75 years in prison for aggravated robbery. He was never tried on the rape charge.
According to court documents, the woman and her male companion stopped at a Dallas liquor store in November 1979 to buy cigarettes and use a payphone.
As they returned to their car, two men, at least one of whom was armed, forced their way into the vehicle and ordered them to drive.
They also demanded money from the two victims.
The men eventually ordered the car to the side of the road and forced the male driver out of the car. The woman attempted to flee but was pulled back inside.
The perpetrators drove the woman to a nearby park, where they raped her at gunpoint. They debated killing her but eventually let her live, keeping her rabbit-fur coat and her driver's licence and warning her they would kill her if she reported the assault to police.
The victim ran to the nearest highway and collapsed unconscious by the side of the road, where she was discovered.
About five days later, two men whose descriptions did not match Dupree tried to sell the rabbit-fur coat at a grocery store two miles from the liquor store, according to court documents.
The car stolen from the victims was found abandoned in the parking lot.
Dupree and Massingill were arrested in December because they looked similar to two suspects being sought in another sexual assault and robbery.
The 26-year-old victim picked both men out of a photo line-up, but her male companion did not identify either defendant.
Dupree was convicted and spent the next three decades appealing. The Court of Criminal Appeals turned him down three times.
The Innocence Project, which took on his case in 2006, obtained DNA testing last summer on biological evidence taken from the female victim in 1979.
In July last year, shortly after Dupree's release, the test results cleared Dupree and Massingill.
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