The Framing of Preston Hughes, Part 1

This is the seventh post in the series Framing the Guilty, Framing the Innocent. For ease of navigation among the posts, use the Table of Contents. 

In the case of Robert Otis Coulson, the Houston police planted an envelope on a desk. The State and People of Texas used that planted evidence to convince a jury that Coulson was expected to be at the murder scene around the time of the murder.

In the case of Larry Swearingen, the police or the person who killed Melissa Trotter planted scraps of paper near the home of Swearingen's parents. The State and People of Texas used that planted evidence to convince a jury that Swearingen had been with Melissa Trotter on the day of the murder.

Also in the case of Larry Swearingen, the police or the person who killed Melissa Trotter planted in Swearingen's mobile home a pair of pantyhose minus the leg that had been used to strangle Melissa Trotter. The State and People of Texas used that planted evidence to convince the jury that Larry Swearingen had strangled Melissa Trotter.

In the case of Preston Hughes, the most thoroughly framed man ever, the Houston police planted a pair of eyeglasses between two sofa cushions. The prosecution then used those planted eyeglasses to convince the jury that murder victim Shandra Charles had been in Hughes' apartment on the night of her murder.

I'll begin by recreating the HPD search of Preston Hughes' apartment. I'll rely on the police report of HPD Crime Scene Officer F. L. Hale. Officer Hale's job was to photograph and collect the evidence. In his police report, he frequently referred to himself in the third Person. The Skeptical Juror believes that writing style confuses rather than clarifies, but The Skeptical Juror had no say in the matter.

From Officer Hale's police report, the many spelling and typographical errors being in the original:

Officer Hale left the morgue and went to the CSU office. While completing the report I received a telephone call at approximately 8;30. I was advised by homcide detectives D.A. Ferguson and E.T. Yanchak that they had obtained a Consent to Search from the suspect. Officer Hale was requested to met with then at 2310 Crescent Park, which is the Lakehurst Apartments.

Hughes' apartment was on the second floor. His apartment was on the left as Hale climbed the stairs shown in the HPD photograph immediately below:

Returning to Officer Hale's report, errors in the original:

Upon entering the apartment Officer Hale was lead into the living room and shown a pair of precription silver rim glasses. These glasses were found between the cushions of a three cushion couch, against the south wall of the living room.

Based on Officer Hale's description and sketch of Hughes' apartment, I prepared a series of sketches to help walk you through search. The first of those sketches follows immediately: 

As Hale entered the apartment, one of the detectives led him directly to a "three cushion couch" in the living room and pointed to a pair of eyeglasses wedged between two of the cushions. Officer Hale took two photographs of the couch and the embedded eyeglasses. I present the first of those two photographs below. Good luck seeing the eyeglasses.

Maybe you can see the eyeglasses if you look hard, if you squint. There they are between the center seat cushion and the one beside it, the one rightmost in the image.

Here's the second shot, presumably one that Officer Hale would consider to be a closeup.

Perhaps you can see the glasses if you enlarge the image by clicking on it. To simplify matters, I've cropped the photo around the glasses, enlarged the cropped segment, and rotated it. Now you can finally see the glasses.

During Hughes' trial, Shandra Charles' best friend testified that she last saw Shandra alive, not long before the murders, wearing those eyeglasses while standing outside Preston Hughes' apartment. That testimony coupled with those eyeglasses were damning evidence of Hughes' guilt. Both the testimony and the eyeglasses were, however, manufactured evidence. The friend's trial testimony is contradicted in all crucial details by the interview she provided to the HPD on the morning after the murders. The eyeglasses were placed in the position shown by members of the Houston Police Department. As I prove that to you, I will refer to the eyeglasses as the HPD glasses.

The HPD glasses do not appear to me as if they simply fell into the position shown in the photograph. The glasses did not simply lay on a cushion, nor did they simply fall between the cushions. They appear to be forcefully wedged between two cushions.

I therefore decided to see if my cheap, well-used reading glasses would fall between the cushions of my not-so-cheap but well-used couch in similar fashion. I dropped my glasses time after time. I dropped them while standing in front of the couch, while sitting on one cushion, while simultaneously pushing on the other cushion, while in the act of standing up or sitting down. As Dr. Seuss might say, I dropped them from a box, I dropped them with a fox. I was never able to approximate the arrangement recorded in Officer Hale's photographs.

Though each time I attempted to drop my glasses in the seam between my sofa cushions, they usually didn't land in the seam. Most frequently, they straddled the seam. They did, however, fall in the seam with sufficient frequency that I have no difficulty believing eyeglasses can fall between couch cushions if dropped or placed nearby. Here is a picture of one instance in which my glasses fell into the seam between the cushions.

When my glasses actually landed between the cushions, they usually (almost always) ended up with the lenses nearly vertical. This is different than the arrangement of the HPD glasses. The HPD glasses ended up with the lenses nearly horizontal. Sometimes (not very often) my glasses ended up with the lenses horizontal, just as the HPD glasses allegedly had.

While my glasses would sometimes land with lenses horizontal, they always ended up along the top of the seam between the cushions. They never managed to wedge themselves in between the cushions, as the HPD glasses allegedly had.

I never really expected that they would wedge themselves in. They're eyeglasses, for gosh sakes, not anvils. I did wonder, though, if they might wedge their way in between the cushions if people sat on one or both of the cushions. So I tried repeatedly to cause them to wedge into a position similar to the HPD glasses. I arranged the glasses in many different starting positions, then I pressed on one cushion, then the other, then both. I even sat and wiggled around. No luck. No matter what I tried, I could not give my glasses a couch cushion wedgie.

I came close a couple times. Consider the following image.

Though it's somewhat difficult to see, the glasses are sorta, kinda wedged between the sides of the two cushions. It's not quite like the arrangement of the HPD glasses, but it's as close as I could get. 

Continuing with Officer Hale's photographic stroll through Preston Hughes' apartment, I return to Hale's police statement and to my informative series of sketches. The egregious textual errors are in Hale's original.

Officer Hale was then lead into the southeast bedroom and shown a pair of blue jean, two blue shirt on the bedroom floor.

Here is the photograph that Officer Hale took looking down the hallway into the master bedroom.

You can barely see a pair of pants and a shirt on the floor in front of a dresser.

Stepping into the doorway, Officer Hale took following photograph:

Stepping into the master bedroom and turning to his left, Officer Hale took the following photograph.

Together, the photographs show the blue jeans and the two blue work shirts that Officer Hale secured as evidence. The clothing items would not be checked for blood until three days before the beginning of the trial. James Bolding, the notorious supervisor of the notorious serology department of the notorious HPD crime lab, would record that no blood was apparent on the clothing and that two blood-specific tests were negative for blood. James Bolding and Assistant DA Chuck Noll, however, would keep those test results from the jurors. Instead, under the carefully orchestrated questioning of Chuck Noll, James Bolding would inform the jurors that he had found blood on blue jeans and one of the blue works shirts. That, however, is a different frame for a different telling.

Here, I will try to focus on the eyeglasses.

After photographing the clothing in the master bedroom, Officer Hale photographed a knife and sheath in the closet of the second bedroom. The knife and sheath had been located in the box nearby. The items had been removed for the purpose of photographing them. Once again, from Officer Hale's police report, followed once again by one of my ever-enlightening sketches. 

Inside the closet of the southwest bedroom Officer Hale was shown a large knife wedged inside a cardboard box, found on the floor, next to the knife was a sheath.

Here's the photograph of the knife and sheath.

There is some rust on the tip of the knife. No blood was apparent anywhere on the knife or the sheath. The notorious James Bolding of the notorious serology department of the notorious HPD crime lab did not test this knife for blood until he was actually sitting in the witness box, testifying before the jury. He applied a reagent that reacts to the iron in rust as readily as it reacts to the iron in blood. Like magic, the reagent changed color right before the jurors' eyes. Under the carefully orchestrated questioning of Assistant DA Chuck Noll, James Bolding testified that the knife had just tested positive for blood. During the tepid cross-examination by Hughes' defense attorney, James Bolding conceded that a few other substances, such as turnips, might cause the reagent to change color. Bolding failed to mention that one of the substances that created false positives was rust.

But that is a different frame for a different telling.

As you can see from the photograph, the knife blade is single-edged: it has one sharp edge and one blunt edge. The blade measured five inches long and one inch wide. That knife, therefore, is absolutely not the murder weapon. The autopsy reports for 15-year-old Shandra Charles and her 3-year-old cousin Marcell Taylor describe lethal neck wounds that could only have been caused by a long, narrow, double-edge blade. The jurors, however, would never learn that. Instead, the last-moment, fill-in medical examiner, the one who had first read the autopsy reports that morning in his car, testified that the knife in the photograph above was consistent with the stab wounds.

But that is a different frame for a different telling. Here, I will try to focus on the eyeglasses.

After photographing the knife and the sheath, Officer Hale proceeded (as the police like to say) to take photographs of the items on the dining room table. Again from Officer Hale's police report:

On the dining room table was a maroon pullover shirt, a clear plastic bag containing green leafy substance.

Here's the photograph.

Officer Hale took the maroon shirt and the green leafy substance into evidence. The green leafy substance, of course, turned out to be marijuana. No blood was apparent on the shirt. Testing was done to detect any unseen blood.

CSU Officer Hale prepared a property invoice listing all the items that he had secured from Hughes' apartment, from the crime scene, from the hospital, and from the morgue. He typed the date of the property invoice in the appropriate box. That date was 9/27/88, the day after the murders. He typed his name and signed the document. He then delivered the items and the property invoice to the HPD property room.

Property Officer F.L. Martin was on duty. He inserted the property invoice into his typewriter and typed his name and he typed the time he received the items from Officer Hale. The text that Martin typed is misaligned with the text that Hale typed. Officer Martin then signed the property invoice.

As part of an open records request, Barbara Lunsford of the Mystery Crime Scene received a copy of that property invoice. She added two notes in red. She also outlined the date / time box in red. I obtained my copy of the document from her. I present my copy of the document immediately below.

Astoundingly, the time on the property invoice is 2:58 AM.

Preston Hughes' supporters long claimed that this document is proof that the police searched Preston Hughes' apartment not after sunrise, as they claimed. Instead, the HPD must have searched Hughes' apartment sometime prior to 2:58 AM. Since the time on the Consent to Search form was 5:35 AM, Preston's supporters claim that the search was illegal, that the incriminating evidence recovered during that search was inadmissible, and that Preston therefore deserved a new trial.

For a long time, this property invoice troubled me. I agreed that it proved the HPD searched Hughes' apartment without warrant or consent. The focus of my investigation, however, was whether or not Preston Hughes' was actually innocent. I was focused on the results of the search rather than on the propriety of the search. From my perspective, I didn't see how the property invoice helped me reach a decision.

Until ...

Like a bolt from the blue, it hit me that the HPD had searched the Hughes's apartment twice: once before 2:58 AM as evidenced by the property invoice, and once after sunset as evidenced by one of the photographs from the second search. I repeat that photo below.

You can see sunlight through the curtain. The lamp on the dresser is off. The hallway light is off. The hallway light switch is in the off position. This photograph and the others in the collection were taken during the second search, after sunrise. Along with the property invoice, this photograph proves that the HPD planted evidence in Preston Hughes' apartment.

As a minimum, the HPD planted Preston's own clothing, knife, scabbard, and marijuana back in his apartment. Someone secured those same items during the first search, the search that took place not long after midnight. Officer Hale turned those same items into the property room at 2:58 AM. Someone removed those items from the property room and planted them back in Preston Hughes' apartment.

It had been a serious mistake to search and secure items from the Hughes' apartment without a warrant or a signed Consent to Search. I suspect that, after the shift change, the incoming detectives recognized the problem and settled on a recovery plan. They recovered Preston Hughes' items from the property room, planted them right back in his apartment, and photographed the items as if nothing had ever happened.

But it gets better, or tragically worse, depending on your point of view.

The eyeglasses that did not show up in the first search, as per the property invoice, did show up in the second search, as per the sunlight coming through the blinds. The eyeglasses were wedged between the cushions of Preston Hughes' couch not on the night of the murders. Instead they were planted between the cushions of the couch after daylight the following morning.

But it gets better still, or tragically worse still, depending on your point of view.

As Ward Larkin and I, lay persons that we are, were preparing multiple legal motions to save Preston Hughes from a wrongful execution, Ward Larkin discovered that there was box of evidence still at the courthouse. Among the other startling discoveries in that box were the eyeglasses. He took a picture of them. I present a cropped version of that picture below.

I compared the eyeglasses in Ward's photograph with the eyeglasses in Officer Hale's photograph, the enlargement of which I repeat below.

I concluded that the eyeglasses in the two photos were one in the same. Still they seemed significantly different. I wasn't struck by the writing on one lens or the label on the other. I was struck instead that the temples, the arms that extend over the ears, were so obviously visible behind the lenses. I didn't recall that from the HPD photos. I didn't recall it for good reason. In the HPD photos, the temples are extended!

And there it finally is. The HPD recovered Shandra Charles' eyeglasses from the crime scene. During the second search of Preston Hughes' apartment, while planting the other items back in his apartment, the HPD planted Shandra Charles' eyeglasses between the cushions of his couch. To pose the eyeglasses nicely for the impending photo shoot, the HPD extended the temples of Shandra Charles eyeglasses and shoved them between the cushions of Preston Hughes' couch until the lenses were wedged in the position shown.

The State and People of Texas executed Preston Craig Hughes, III on 15 November 2012, despite clear and persistent warnings that he had been framed.

The Framing of Larry Swearingen, Part 2

This is the sixth post in the series Framing the Guilty, Framing the Innocent. For ease of navigation among the posts, use the Table of Contents. For a thorough overview of the case against Larry Swearingen, see The Framing of Larry Swearingen, Part 1.

On 8 December 1998, Melissa Trotter disappeared from Montgomery College, a community college 30 miles north of Houston.

On 11 December 1998, Larry Swearingen was jailed for charges unrelated to the the disappearance of Melissa Trotter.

On 17 December 1998, John Parsley found scraps of paper along a ditch in front of his home. The scraps turned out to be pieces of Melissa Trotter's class schedule and health insurance paperwork. Parsley was a neighbor of Larry Swearingen's mother and stepfather. He found the scraps as he was taking out his trash cans for pickup. Normal trash days were Mondays and Thursdays. The pieces of paper had not been there during the prior trash pickups on 10 and 14 December. The scraps appeared only after Larry Swearingen had been in jail for 9 days.

On 2 January 1999, several hunters discovered the body of Melissa Trotter in the Sam Houston National Forest, some 55 miles north of Houston. She had allegedly been strangled with one leg from a pair of pantyhose, the remainder of which was missing. The police had searched that area three times, at least once coming within 20 feet of where the hunters discovered the remains. None of the searchers noticed a dead body. None of them smelled a decaying corpse. The body appeared only after Larry Swearingen had been in jail for 22 days.

On 3 January 1999, Chief Medical Examiner Joye Carter performed the autopsy on Melissa Trotter's body. In a sworn affidavit provided after Swearingen's conviction, Dr. Carter explained that the nearly pristine state of Trotter's internal organs indicated that "the body had not been exposed more than two weeks in the forest environment." Dr. Carter affirmed also that Trotter's undiminished body mass "supports a forensic opinion that Ms. Trotter's body was left in the woods within two weeks of the date of discovery on January 2, 1999." Based on Dr. Carter's medical opinion, Melissa's body was not deposited in the Sam Houston National Forest until Larry Swearingen had been in jail for at least 8 days.

In addition to Joye Carter, ten noted scientists and doctors -- forensic entomologist and pathologists -- have signed affidavits expressing the same conclusion: Trotter's body could have been deposited in the Sam Houston National Forest no earlier than 8 days after Larry Swearingen had been jailed. Because the organs' cell walls were still intact, one of those noted scientists affirmed that the body had been in the forest no more than two days before its discovery.

Sometime after the autopsy, and examination of Trotter's fingernail scrapings revealed some "very tiny, bright red flakes." The flakes had a total size "no bigger than ... a point of a pencil." Given that the flakes were still red, they could not have been exposed to the elements for more than a few days. They tested positive for human blood. DNA testing produced a profile consistent with a male, but inconsistent with Larry Swearingen.

On 6 January, Sergeant Leo Mock dropped by the mobile home park where Swearingen had been living. The landlord had recently cleaned out Swearingen's trailer in order to rent it to another party. Mock searched the trash. He discovered a pair of pantyhose with one leg missing. A forensic specialist would determine that the ligature around Melissa Trotter's neck had been cut from the pantyhose that Mock discovered in the trash outside Swearingen's trailer. Swearingen's trailer and the trailer park, had, however, twice previously been thoroughly searched for any evidence linking Swearingen to Trotter's disappearance. The pantyhose turned up four days after the body had been discovered, only after Larry Swearingen had been in jail for 26 days.

The State and People of Texas are so confident that this string of events points to Larry Swearingen as the murderer that they want to execute him as soon as they can. A jury found Swearingen guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the appellate courts have found no substantive error in the process whatsoever, and the State sees no reason to delay the execution any longer.

Contrarian that I am, I find the string of events to be exceptionally unlikely, a pathetic excuse for due process, and an immoral basis for an execution.

At the heart of this debate is whether or not Melissa Trotter was murdered before or after Larry Swearingen was jailed. In a subsequent post, I will discuss the means by which the State convinced a jury that Larry Swearingen murdered Melissa Trotter before he was jailed on an unrelated charge. In the remainder of this post, I will discuss the improbability of that claim. One of the most obvious implications of my probability analysis is that Larry Swearingen was framed for the murder of Melissa Trotter, framed by the planting of the pantyhose remnant, and framed by the planting of scraps of her paperwork.

If Larry Swearingen is executed by the State and People of Texas, he certainly won't be the first person to succumb to planted evidence, and I expect he will not be the last.

In the case of Robert Otis Coulson, a federal court agreed that the Houston police planted an envelope on the desk of Coulson's father. The court agreed also that the Harris County prosecutors knew or should have known the envelope was planted. The court agreed also that the prosecutors introduced the planted envelope as inculpatory evidence while convincing the jury to convict Coulson of capital murder. The court declared, however, that the framing was nothing more than a harmless error. Robert Otis Coulson was executed on 25 June 2002.

In the case of Preston Hughes, the courts refused to even consider the multiple fashions in which the Houston police and the Harris County prosecutors knowingly used manufactured evidence to secure a conviction for capital murder. In the next post, I will address just one piece of manufactured evidence in that case: a pair of eyeglasses planted between two sofa cushions. Preston Craig Hughes, III, who was innocent and wrongfully convicted, was executed by the State and People of Texas on 15 November 2012.

In the cases of Coulson and Hughes, the Houston police planted the envelope and the eyeglasses. In the case of Swearingen, the paper scraps and the pantyhose remnant were planted either by the police or by the person who murdered Melissa Trotter. Either way, Swearingen was framed. Either way, the State and People of Texas are responsible for using false evidence to convict an innocent man.

The State's case is that Swearingen picked up Melissa Trotter at the Montgomery College and transported her to his mobile home. There, the two engaged in vaginal sex. At some point, there was a struggle that left Swearingen's home in disarray. Swearingen strangled Trotter with one leg of his wife's pantyhose, put Trotter's body in his truck, drove the body to the Sam Houston National Forest, dumped it there, then returned home.

The State's case makes absolutely no sense. It is statistically unlikely in the extreme. According to the State and People of Texas, Swearingen decided to kill Trotter for some unknown reason. To kill his victim, Swearingen didn't use a firearm, as do 70% of the murderers in this country. Perhaps he didn't own a firearm, or have it at the ready, or feared the noise.

Nor did Swearingen stab his victim to death, as do 13% of the murderers in this country. Surely he had a knife or pair of scissors in his home. He must have had something of the sort if he cut one leg from his wife's pantyhose.

Nor did Swearingen asphyxiate his victim, as do 6.4% of all murderers in this country. There must have been a pillow nearby.

Nor did Swearingen pummel or kick or stomp his victim to death, with his hands or feet, as do 6.2% of murderers in this country. I know that those makeshift weapons were handy.

Nor did Swearingen bludgeon his victim with a blunt object, as do 4.4% of murderers in this country. Surely he had a frying pan or a hammer laying around.

Nor did Swearingen strangle his victim with his bare hands, as do 0.6% of murderers in this country. Once again, I'm confident those makeshift weapons were readily available.

Instead, according to the State, Swearingen elected to manufacture and strangle his victim with a ligature, as do only 0.2% of the murderers in this country. Only 1 in 500 murders is committed by ligature strangulation, and the State's case is even more unlikely than that, more unlikely than 1 in 500.

In a moment of passion and panic, according to the State, Swearingen did not just grab a nearby object to strangle his victim. He did not use any of the victim's clothing, such as a sweater arm, or a brassiere, or a belt. Nor did he use a pillowcase or a lamp cord. According to the State, Swearingen took the time to manufacture a ligature from his wife's pantyhose. Instead of stabbing or cutting his victim with a knife or scissors, he used a knife or scissors to stab or cut his wife's pantyhose. The State offers no explanation why Swearingen would do such a thing in such a frantic moment, nor does it explain what Melissa Trotter may have been doing while Swearingen manufactured the ligature that would be used to kill her.

And still their case is worse than all this. According to the State, Swearingen left the remainder her of his wife's pantyhose behind when he took Melissa's body to Sam Houston National Forest. He presumably removed the body from his home so that his crime would not be discovered, but he left the obvious remnant of the murder weapon behind.

He couldn't have left it behind carelessly or unconsciously. It must have been deliberate, because he hid the remnant of his hastily crafted murder weapon so well that the police were unable to find it on either of two thorough searches. Swearingen hid it so well that it would not be discovered for twenty-six days, in the garbage outside his home, after the police finally knew which murder weapon was used to kill Melissa Trotter.

Assuming I can model all the improbabilities associated with the pantyhose remnant by assuming the police had a 50% chance of discovering the remnant during each search of the trailer, the odds that Swearingen hid the pantyhose remnant well but imperfectly in his trailer are 1 in 8. That number, I suggest, is generous to the State's case. 

Nonetheless, the combined odds of Swearingen using a ligature and hiding the panty hose well but imperfectly are 1 in 4000. (For the statistically challenged and curious, I suggest the Khan Academy. It's an amazing source of free, high-quality, online classes for a wide range of subjects.)

The string of improbabilities in the State's case doesn't end with the use of a ligature and the surprise discovery of the pantyhose remnant. Swearingen allegedly disposed of Melissa Trotter's body so well that the police failed to find it in any one of three searches of the area, even though they came within 20 feet.

Assuming I can model all the improbabilities associated with the police failure to discover the body by assuming a 50% chance of discovery during each search, the odds of not finding the body during any of their three searches are 1 in 8. That number, I suggest, is also generous to the State's case given that they apparently came within 20 feet of the body on at least one search. 

The combined odds of Swearingen using a ligature, and hiding the pantyhose remnant well but imperfectly, and hiding the body well but imperfectly are 1 in 32,000. 

Not only must Swearingen have hidden the body well but imperfectly, he must have done something mysteriously clever to it such that its internal organs decayed so slowly that the medical examiner and ten other experts would be fooled into believing that it had only recently been deposited. On the other hand, there are two experts who maintain that Trotter's body was indeed deposited in the forest before Swearingen was jailed. Dr. Joye Carter is one of them. (She has sworn to diametrically opposite scientific conclusions in the same case, depending upon whichever way the figurative wind was blowing). For simplicity, I assume the odds that all of Swearingen's ten experts are wrong is 1 in 10. Once again, I believe that I am being generous to the State's case.

The combined odds of Swearingen using a ligature, and hiding the pantyhose remnant well but imperfectly, and hiding the body well but imperfectly, and deceiving the 10 defense experts is 1 in 320,000.

The State argued also that Swearingen took some of Trotter's personal papers, tore them to shreds, then disposed of the shreds near his parents' home in such a fashion that they would not be discovered during the first trash pickup after the murder, or the first pickup after his arrest, but would be discovered during the second trash pickup after his arrest. Assuming I can model the probability that the scraps would become exposed during any trash pickup after the murders as 1 in 2, then the odds that the scraps were exposed during the third pickup after the murders is 1 in 8.

The combined odds of Swearingen using a ligature, and hiding the pantyhose remnant well but imperfectly, and hiding the scraps of paper well but imperfectly, and hiding the body well but imperfectly, and deceiving the 10 experts is 1 in 2.5 million, or thereabouts.

And, to add an exceptionally unlikely icing on a highly improbable cake, the State argued that a fresh blood flake belonging to a male other than Larry Swearingen innocently and accidentally found its way underneath one of Melissa Trotter's fingernails. I assume that the State would argue that they contaminate crucial evidence only on rare occasions. I'm confident that they will claim they contaminate fewer than one case in ten, probably fewer than one case in a hundred. I'll therefore assume that the chance an unrelated blood flake ended up beneath Trotter's fingernail to be 1 in 100. I suspect that the State, in this case, would claim the odds are even lower.

The final combined odds of Swearingen using a ligature, and hiding the pantyhose remnant well but imperfectly, and hiding the scraps of paper well but not perfectly, and hiding the body well but imperfectly, and having 10 defense experts sign scientifically unsound affidavits, and having an unrelated blood flake land beneath Trotter's fingernails is one in 250 million, one in a quarter billion, or thereabouts.

I acknowledge that my combined probability of all the events is no better than the individual probabilities that I assigned to each event. While I believe each of those individual probabilities were generous to the State's case, I'm confident that readers convinced of Swearingen's guilt would disagree. 

Regardless of the numbers assigned, the State's case presumes a long string of improbable events. I assigned probability numbers to each event to provide some sense of how unlikely the entire string might be.

If just one of those events did not occur as claimed by the State and People of Texas, then Larry Swearingen was framed for the murder of Melissa Trotter.

The Framing of Robert Otis Coulson

This is the fifth post in the series Framing the Guilty, Framing the Innocent. For ease of navigation among the posts, use the Table of Contents.

Regarding the framing of Cesar Fierro, the State and People of Texas acknowledged that they had used the threat of torture to extract a confession. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled it to be a harmless error. Cesar Fierro went insane while isolated for decades in a minuscule cell.

Regarding the framing of Richard Ochoa and Richard Danziger, the State and People of Texas acknowledged that they extracted a false confession from an innocent man, then coerced that innocent man to falsely implicate an innocent friend. While under the care and custody of the State and People of Texas, that innocent friend had a piece of his skull driven into his brain by the steel-toed boot of another inmate.

In the case of Robert Otis Coulson, to be discussed herein, the State and People of Texas may have coerced a false confession from one innocent man, then had that innocent man falsely implicate his innocent friend. In other words, the case of Robert Otis Coulson may be strikingly parallel the case of Richard Danziger. There are differences, of course. Significantly, no one has proven that the confession and implication in the Coulson case were false. More significantly, Robert Coulson was administered lethal chemicals to his bloodstream rather than a steel-toed boot to his brain.

There is one other difference, and that difference is directly relevant to the framing of Larry Swearingen. Evidence was planted in both cases to help insure a conviction. I'll discuss the planting of evidence in the Coulson case in this post, and the planting of evidence in the Swearingen case in the next.

On 13 November 1992, the Houston Fire Department responded to a residential fire. Inside the house, the firefighters discovered a total of five bodies in three different rooms. Each body had been bound at the hands and feet. Each had been asphyxiated by a plastic bag secured over the head. Each had been doused with gasoline and set on fire.

Each victim was a relative of Robert Otis Coulson. Homeowners Otis and Mary Coulson were Robert's adoptive parents. Sarah Coulson and Robin Wentworth were Robert's adult sisters. Both were pregnant. Rick Wentworth was Robin's husband and Robert's brother-in-law. Not insignificantly, Rick was a 6-foot tall, 230 pound jailer for the Harris County Sheriff’s department.

The police theorized that Robert, the sole remaining family member, had single-handedly and sequentially murdered everyone in the house to secure a $600,000 inheritance. The State built its case on the multiple, muddled confessions of Robert's roommate Jared Althaus, on Robert's alleged preoccupation with the inheritance, and on a letter discovered on top of his father's desk.

Robert claimed that he had been scheduled to have dinner with his family at a Luby's restaurant. Jared dropped him off at the restaurant, but his family members did not arrive as planned. Robert called the house between 5:45 and 6:00 PM to see why they were late, but no one answered. Robert assumed there was confusion over the chosen restaurant. Jared returned as scheduled around 6:30 PM, and the two of them drove as planned to the Althaus' family farm for the weekend. Only after arriving at the farm did Robert learn that his family had been murdered.

The evidence supports Robert's claim of a scheduled dinner. The Coulson's neighbor reported that the four cars of the five victims had been in the Coulson driveway since 3:30 PM, meaning that all five victims had been present in the residence from that time. A friend of Robin's had called at 4:45 PM. Robin answered in a natural and normal sounding voice and explained they were on their way out for dinner. The fire was called in at 6:17 p.m.

In his initial police statement, Jared corroborated Robert's version of events. In his second police statement, Jared recanted his first statement and claimed that he dropped Robert off at his parent's house, picked him up a few hours later, and was unaware (at least initially) that Robert had murdered his family.

Between his second and third statements, the police tracked Jared to a motel where he had gone with his girlfriend. There the police conducted an unrecorded interview with Jared in the police car. The police made no written report of that interview. Immediately thereafter, Jared paged the homicide detectives to inform them he was returning to the station. Jared reached the station even before the police officers.

In the wee hours of the morning, after an all-night interrogation, Jared finally confessed that he had helped Robert plan the murders and had helped him carry them out. Jared claimed, however, that he was not at the house while Robert was murdering his family.

By 8:25 AM, Jared had completed a polygraph examination regarding the truthfulness of his confession. He failed that examination.

In exchange for Jared's guilty plea and testimony, the DA offered to recommend a sentence of 20 years rather than death. Jared testified so well for the State that he was sentenced to only 10 years. In fact, he testified so well that he served only 5 years for his alleged role in the brutal murders of 5 people.

Jared testified that Robert had, before the murders, called his parents and told them that he wanted to speak with them about a business deal. He arranged to have Robin and Rick Wentworth arrive around 5 PM, leaving himself enough time to kill his parents and his sister Sarah before Robin and Rick arrived.

Jared dropped Robert off near the house around 4:15 PM. He picked Robert up around 6 PM. Robert detailed the murders for him.

Soon after arriving at the house, Robert lured his mother into a garage bedroom on the pretense that he wanted to share a surprise with her about the business deal. He tried to immobilize her with a stun gun, but the stun gun didn't work. As she struggled, he assured her that he just needed money, that he was not going to hurt anyone, and that he was just going to tie her up. He smothered her with a pillow before binding her hands and feet.

Robert had no difficulty disposing of his father, whom he described to Jared as a "wimp".

Robert then went to Sarah's room. Once again he used the stun gun in an effort to immobilize her, but once again the stun gun didn't work. As Robert was binding Sarah's hands and feet, he told her that he needed money and that nothing would happen to her. She thanked him for sparing her baby. He then put a plastic bag over her head and zip-corded it closed.

While Robert was still in Sarah's room, Robin and Rick arrived early. Rick jimmied the locked screen door and entered. Robert attempted to speak with each of them alone, one after the other, but failed to separate them. Robert therefore threatened them with a gun. He told them that Jared was in the other room and would kill the parents if either Rick or Robin failed to cooperate.

Robert feared the gun would make too much noise if he used it. He therefore retrieved a crowbar from the garage. He hit each of them on the back of the head with that crowbar, striking Rick several times. He bound them, gagged them, and tied bags over their heads.

Robert had planned to remove all the bags and zip cords to make it appear as if each of the victims had died of smoke inhalation. However, while pouring gas over the bodies, the water heater ignited the fumes in the garage bedroom where he had doused his parents. Robert therefore lit the remaining three bodies on fire using matches.

After Jared picked up Robert around 6 PM, Jared drove hither and yon as Robert disposed of evidence by throwing it out the passenger window. In this fashion, Robert disposed of a crowbar, a gas can, a stun gun, a pistol, a backpack, the clothing he had worn, and a pair of sunglasses.

Four days after the murders, Jared helped the police locate the evidence Robert had thrown from the car. As part of the search, the police employed helicopters, dive teams, dogs, and mounted search teams. They recovered a crowbar, a gas can, a sweatshirt, a cap, a backpack, a ski-mask, and the slide mechanism from a gun.

Forensic examinations could link none of items to either Robert or the crime. There was, for example, no blood, hair, or fingerprints on the crowbar to tie it to Robert or to any of the victims. Jared claimed that he had purchased most of those items. All efforts to confirm Jared's claims about when and where he had purchased them failed.

Other aspects of Jared's confession also failed to comport. Jared testified that Robert suffocated his mother with a pillow. No pillow as found near the body, and no fibers were found in Mary Coulson's airway. Jared testified that the water heater caused an explosion that disrupted Robert's plans. Arson investigators for both the prosecution and the defense testified that the no such explosion occurred. Jared testified that Robin and Rick surprised Robert by arriving early around 4:15 PM. The neighbor testified that all the cars were in the driveway by 3:30 PM.

Soon after the murders, the police examined Robert's person, clothing, and the alleged getaway car for any sign of a struggle, or burnt skin, or singed hair, or gasoline fumes, or anything else that might link him to the murders. They found nothing.

I do not know whether or not Robert Otis Coulson murdered his five family members, but I believe he did not. I suspect the police extracted a false confession from Jared Althaus by threatening him with a death sentence, just as the police extracted a false confession from Richard Ochoa by threatening him with a death sentence. I suspect the police tailored Jared's confession to fit their theory of the crime, just as the police tailored Ochoa's confession to fit their theory of the crime.

I am particularly suspicious of Jared's claim that Robert told him that Robin and Rick appeared earlier than expected, and that Rick jimmied the screen door to gain entrance. I suspect that even the police doubted that Robert could have so easily murdered all five separately and sequentially if all five had been in the house when Robert arrived. I suspect that the police discovered the screen door had been jimmied and needed an explanation for that as well. Jared's final story was the best they could manage, even though the timing conflicted with the observations of the neighbor.

I suspect further that the gun was nothing more than an invention to make more credible Robert's ability to single-handedly murder the five victims separately and sequentially. It made no difference to the police that they could not link Robert or Jared to any purchase or ownership of a handgun. They found the slide mechanism of a pistol during their extensive search for evidence, and they incorporated that tidbit into Jared's confession.

I suspect the murders may have instead been a case of mistaken identity. Neighbor Charlotte Diemer feared that the attack on the Coulson home may have been intended for her and her family. Four days prior to the murder, she received a death threat by telephone. She reported the threat to the police. She pointed out to the firemen that the Coulson house was quite similar to hers. The two houses were located near one another, on the same street, on the same side side of the street. Each had a "For Sale" sign in the yard. Each had a realtor lockbox on the front door. The police and arson reports indicate no follow-up on the threat against Ms. Diemer's family. The State withheld the threat from the defense for more than a year, until the trial was well under way and an arson investigator mentioned Ms. Diemer's concern.

Mass family murders are quite rare, as are death threats to an entire family. The probability is near zero that death threats against an entire family would be soon followed by murders of a neighboring family, unless those two events were related.

I do not believe that Robert Coulson killed his family, but I cannot prove he did not. I can, however, prove that the police planted an envelope on the desk of Robert's father, and that the State and People of Texas used that envelope to help convince a jury that Robert Coulson was a murderer.

The envelope was an old Aetna letter-sized envelope with notations about a prior loan to Robert Coulson. The State claimed that the envelope was proof that Robert was expected at the house to discuss a business opportunity. Jared had incorporated this alleged business opportunity into his final confession.

(Please keep that last point in mind, that Jared claimed Robert used an alleged business opportunity to lure his family to the house. If the envelope was planted, and I will soon show that it was, then there was no evidence whatsoever that Robert lured anyone anywhere with any business opportunity. It seems as if the State manufactured the testimonial evidence just as they manufactured the physical evidence.)

The State argued that the father, Otis Coulson, had pulled the envelope from his other papers and placed it on the top of his desk in preparation for the impending discussion about a business opportunity. During its closing argument, the State asked the jurors to remember that the envelope was found "on the table in the den apart from anything else because [Otis] is expecting his son to come over and talk to him about a business deal."

It is clear that the jurors believed the envelope to be significant. During deliberations, they twice asked to see the "envelope that was on the desk." The first request was during the guilt / innocence phase of the trial. They voted guilty. The second was during the penalty phase of the trial. They voted death.

During the appeal process, the State once again emphasized the importance of the envelope, noting that it "was discovered on top of Otis Coulson's desk on the night of the murders. As such, it corroborates Jared Althaus' testimony that the Appellant [Robert Coulson] called his father to arrange a meeting for the night of the murders to discuss his business deal."

The Court of Criminal Appeals agreed that the envelope was significant. They wrote that the importance of the envelope was not what was written on it, but its location "on Otis Coulson's desk on the night of the murders. This fact tended to show that Otis Coulson was expecting to discuss Appellant’s business plans around the time of the murders."

Without further ado, I will now prove that the envelope was planted. More accurately and less impressively, I will now summarize and simplify the remarkable proof developed by Robert Coulson's defense team during the appellate process.

Buckle up. Here we go.

The photo below shows the envelope resting in plain view on top of Otis Coulson's desk.

There's the envelope, just in front of the lamp, just to the left of the calculator. The yellow exhibit sticker at the lower right of the image was apparently added by Robert's defense team for their presentation of the evidence. It does not correspond with the exhibit numbering at Robert's trial.

Two of three such similar photos were shown to the jury to convince them that Robert Coulson used the ploy of a business opportunity to lure his entire surviving family to the Coulson home on the day of the murder. During the trial, Officer Halling testified that she had taken the photographs on the night of the murders. She testified further that the photographs accurately portrayed the conditions of the room as she found it.

Officer Halling would later concede, under oath during an evidentiary hearing, that neither claim was true. She did not take the photographs of the envelope on the table. The envelope was not on the table when she photographed the room on the night of the murders. She claimed during that evidentiary hearing that she did not perjure herself during that capital murder trial of Robert Otis Coulson. She claimed instead that she simply made an honest mistake.

No harm, no foul.

The photo is suspicious on its face, and should have been noted as such by Robert's trial attorneys. Portions of the envelope are still a pristine white while most of the envelope is covered with soot. The soot pattern suggests that the envelope was elsewhere during the fire, mostly exposed, partially covered.

After Robert's conviction and sentence of death, his appellate attorneys submitted an open records request to the Houston police department. Such requests had only recently been allowed by state law. As part of the response to that open records request, Robert's defense team received the photo below.

Holy withheld evidence, Batman! The envelope is not on the desk. Perhaps it was removed before this photograph. Perhaps it was added after the previous photograph.

To help resolve the conundrum, I rotated, scaled, and cropped the two images to provide a head-to-head comparison. I provide the result below.

As you can see, the answer is that the envelope was added after the first photograph was taken. The composite image makes clear also that the envelope was not on the desk during the fire. If the envelope had been on the desk, there would be a soot-free rectangle on the desk pad marking the location of the envelope. There is no such soot-free region on the pad.

A video of the crime scene taken on the night of the murders confirms that the envelope was not on the desk at the time of the murders. How then did the envelope end up on the desk?

During an evidentiary hearing granted in response to this new evidence, Officer Verbitsky testified under oath that he had been called to the crime scene the morning after the murders to take additional photographs. He was the person who took the photograph of the envelope on the desk. As it turns out, he was also the person who took the video of the crime scene on the night of the murders. In that video, the envelope is not on the desk. The envelope appeared sometime after he took the video on the night of the murder, sometime after Officer Haller took her photographs on the night of the murder.

Sergeants Ross and Atchetee were in charge of the crime scene on the night of the murders and during the day after the murders. Sergeant Ross testified under oath at the evidentiary hearing that her partner, Sergeant Atchetee, found the envelope. She testified that she was not in the office when Atchetee found it, that she was in another room. According to the police reports, however, Sergeant Ross was the person who called Officer Verbitsky back to the house to take additional photos of the desk.

(I have not been able to determine whether this Sergeant Ross of the Houston PD homicide squad was also the Sergeant Theresa Ross of the Houston PD homicide squad who testified that Preston Hughes' confession was freely given.)

Sergeant Atchetee testified under oath at the evidentiary hearing that he was the person who found the envelope and placed it on the desk. He testified further that the envelope was not on the desk when he first observed the desk.

Somehow, neither Sergeant Atchetee nor Ross, nor anyone in the Houston Police Department, nor anyone working for the State and People of Texas, ever informed Robert's defense team of this clearly inculpatory evidence.

Sergeant Atchetee then claimed, for the first time ever, that he had picked up the stack of papers from on the left side of the desk, thumbed through them, found the envelope with Robert Coulson's name on it, removed that single envelope from the stack of papers, returned the stack of papers to the desk, then placed the envelope on the desk to be photographed and collected into evidence. Atchetee testified further that the envelope was not on the top of the stack; that he did not find any other papers in the stack that had any value to the case; that he did not tell Officer Verbitsky where he found the envelope; that he just showed the envelope to Verbitsky as it was sitting by itself on the desk; and that he told Verbitsky to photograph the envelope and take it into evidence.

When asked how the envelope could have been so heavily sooted if it had been buried in the stack of papers, Atchetee testified that he had no idea.

None whatsoever.

Sergeant Atchetee first claimed that he removed the envelope from the stack of papers during his testimony at the evidentiary hearing. He certainly did not make that claim to the defense before trial. He certainly did not make it during trial. The State and People of Texas did not make it for him in any of the many pleadings prior to the evidentiary hearing.

The first time Coulson's attorneys ever heard of Atchetee's remarkable discovery was during the evidentiary hearing. Caught off guard, the appellate attorneys were unprepared to thoroughly impeach Atchetee and his testimony.

The court ruled that Atchetee did have cause to consider the envelope as potentially significant. The court ruled that Atchetee therefore did have cause to have the envelope photographed and taken into evidence. The court ruled that the evidence had not been manufactured. The court affirmed the conviction. The court ruled that that Robert Otis Coulson must still die with a needle in his arm.

After losing the appeal, Coulson's attorneys built an even more compelling case that Sergeant Atchetee perjured himself. (I believe the sooted nature of the envelope should have been sufficient.)

The attorneys pointed first to the stack of papers on the left side of the desk, the stack amidst which Atchetee swore he had found the envelope. The photographs show that the stack of papers is identically situated before and after the appearance of the envelope atop of the desk. It is impossible, they argued, that Atchetee could have lifted the stack of papers from the desk, thumbed through the papers, found one document he believed to be relevant, removed the document, and returned the stack of papers to the desk without leaving nary a hint that it had been moved and manipulated.

The attorneys pointed out also that the envelope would not have been relevant if it had been found in the stack of papers. In that case, it would have been nothing more than one of many old documents. Recall that the the State and the appellate courts explained that it was the position of the envelope that mattered, not its content.

Finally, while pouring again through all the videos and photographs provided both before and after trial, they discovered the likely source of the envelope, and it certainly wasn't the undisturbed stack of papers. The envelope was almost certainly taken from a filing cabinet drawer. Consider the photograph below.

Look inside the upper left drawer. There is a white rectangle there. The rest of the drawer is sooted. Something was covering the soot-free rectangle during the fire. That something was almost certainly the envelope that later appeared on the desk, that later proved Robert Coulson had lured his family to the house so that he could murder them. The size and soot pattern of the envelope corresponded nicely with whatever document was removed from the cabinet drawer, after the fire, while Sergeants Ross and Atchetee were in charge of the crime scene.

With this additional evidence in hand, Coulson's attorneys appealed to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court found that the envelope was placed on top of the desk on the day after the murders and that the photograph of the envelope on the desk was false evidence. From their ruling: 

We agree that the state evidentiary hearing … sufficiently establishes that the evidence regarding the location of the envelope was “false.” We also agree that this knowledge may be imputed from the police to the prosecution.

Then the Court threw in their twist. They declared that the manufactured evidence was nothing more than a harmless error.

Robert Otis Coulson was executed on 25 June 2002, forever framed by the State and People of Texas. "I'm innocent," he said just before they injected the lethal cocktail into his vein. "I had absolutely nothing to do with my family's murder. I want to thank the people who supported me. I hope they will continue the fight. That's all."

The Framing of Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger

This is the fourth post in the series Framing the Guilty, Framing the Innocent. For ease of navigation among the posts, use the Table of Contents.

In the early morning hours of 24 October 1988, Nancy DePriest was working alone in a Pizza Hut restaurant in Austin, Texas. The 20-year-old mother of a 15-month-old baby girl was rolling dough when Achim Josef Marino used a restaurant key to let himself in the side door. Marino bound DePriest with a pair of handcuffs and her own bra, raped her, and shot her in the head.

After a religious awakening in 1996, Marino began trying to confess to the crime. He contacted the Austin police, a local newspaper, the ACLU, and Governor George Bush, but none of them would take him seriously. He provided information to the Austin PD that led directly to the recovery of the restaurant keys, the handcuffs, and the .22 calibre Ruger pistol he used in the attack, as well as two money bags he took from the restaurant.

Rather than charge Marino for the murder, the police (and pretty much everyone else) simply ignored him and his evidence. The police conducted no DNA testing to connect the evidence to the crime. They did no ballistics comparison to match shell casing found at the scene with Marino's pistol.

The State and People of Texas were uninterested in Marino because they had already framed Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger for the rape and murder of Nancy DePriest. So tight was the frame that the presiding judge at Danziger's trial recalled that "any jury hearing that testimony would have found those two guys guilty." So tight was the frame that the jury took only seven and a half minutes to deliberate Danziger's fate.

The only evidence against Danziger was the testimony of Danziger's friend, roommate, co-worker, and alleged accomplice Christopher Ochoa. The presiding judge recalled that Ochoa's testimony was "very compelling" because it "contained details police said only a witness to the crime could have known."

Christopher Ochoa pled guilty and a jury found Richard Danziger guilty. Both young men were sentenced to life imprisonment.

While under the care and custody of the State and People of Texas, Richard Danziger was attacked by fellow inmate Armando Gutierrez. Gutierrez threw Danziger to the floor and kicked him in the head repeatedly with a steel-toed boot. One or more of the kicks drove a segment of Danziger's skull into his brain. Danziger was taken to a nearby hospital where, during emergency surgery, a piece of his brain was removed from his shattered skull. Because of his injuries, Danziger suffered partial paralysis, seizures, anxiety, and mental problems. Frequently unable to carry on a simple conversation or recognize family members, Danziger was eventually transferred to the Skyview psychiatric prison.

Pleasant name, Skyview.

In 2000, under pressure from a Wisconsin innocence project, the State and People of Texas finally got around to testing Marino's pistol and the male DNA from Nancy DePriest's body. The shell casing from the crime scene matched Marino's pistol. The male DNA from DePriest's body matched Marino. The testing excluded both Ochoa and Danziger as contributors of the DNA.

Marino was absolutely, unequivocally guilty, despite the State's reluctance to believe so. Ochoa and Danzinger were absolutely, unequivocally innocent, despite the manufactured case of guilt that framed them so well.

There is no doubt that Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger were framed by the State and People of Texas. It makes no difference if the police and the prosecutors believed Ochoa and Danziger were guilty. The case against them was manufactured out of whole cloth. Such a manufactured case is, purely and simply, a frame.

Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger became suspects in the case for the flimsiest of reasons. The two had also been Pizza Hut employees, though they worked at a different restaurant than Nancy DePriest. After the murder, they visited the restaurant where the crime had occurred, ate some pizza, drank some beer, and raised a toast to the murdered Nancy DePriest. An employee found this behavior suspicious and reported it to the police.

The police hauled the two in for questioning and decided Danziger knew too much about the crime. Investigator Hector Polanco homed in on Ochoa as the weak link. Polanco led a lengthy interrogation of the small, timid Ochoa.

Ochoa requested a lawyer. Polanco refused on the pretense that Ochoa had not been officially charged with a crime.

Ochoa pleaded his innocence. Polanco told him 'You're going to get the needle for this. We got you." Polanco threatened him with prison rape, telling him that he would be "fresh meat" for the other inmates.

Ochoa pleaded his innocence. Polanco threw chairs around the room and threatened to "crush his head" if he didn't confess.

Ochoa pleaded his innocence. Polanco showed him pictures of death row and pointed to the spot in Ochoa's arm where the lethal chemicals would be injected.

Polanco did not limit his threats to Ochoa. Donna Angstadt was the manager of the Pizza Hut where Ochoa and Danziger worked. Danziger was her former boyfriend. Polanco questioned her as well. She described the event as "the most horrific, the most horrible experience I've ever been through in my life." Polanco tried to link her to the crime. He told her that she supplied the gun. He told her that she pulled the trigger as Danziger held DePriest's head. He threatened to have her children removed from her custody.

The DePriest case was, of course, not the only one in which Polanco would be accused of coercing confessions and lying about them. In 1992, the Austin PD fired him for perjuring himself during a different murder trial. Polanco was reinstated by an arbitrator who attributed Polanco's false testimony to a memory lapse.

Polanco, unfortunately, was not the only Austin police officer to engage in such abusive and corrupting behavior. In 1992, and investigative task force found that an excessive workload, inadequate training, and inadequate supervision resulted in false confessions. The task force observed also that the Austin PD detectives tended to leave out information that was "not good for our side."

After a lengthy interrogation, Christopher Ochoa did what 20% of all exonerees did: he confessed to a crime he did not commit. Only then was Ochoa provided an attorney. So tight was the frame that even the attorney thought Ochoa was guilty: "There's a detailed confession, you gotta be guilty."

In exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, Ochoa agreed to plead guilty for his role in the robbery and rape. He agreed also to testify against Danziger as the person who shot Nancy DePriest in the back of her head.

While awaiting his sentencing and Danziger's trial, Ochoa maintained his innocence, but only when speaking with his attorney and his family. His attorney explained that if he were to publicly proclaim his innocence, the State might try to execute him. "They made me confess," he told his uncle, "and how am I going to prove my innocence now? It's my word against theirs."

At Danziger's trial, Ochoa provided details of the crime that he could have obtained only from the police. He and Danziger met at a McDonald's near the Pizza Hut at 7 AM. They entered the side door of the Pizza Hut using a master key that Danziger had managed to obtain. DePriest was cutting pizza dough when they arrived. They had a conversation with her. They bound her. They gagged her. They raped and sodomized her eight different times, twice after she had been shot in the head.

Ochoa departed from his confession when describing who shot DePriest. In his confession, he claimed Danziger was the shooter. At trial, he testified that he shot DePriest because she recognized him.

Danziger always maintained his innocence. He could offer no explanation why Ochoa would accuse him. He claimed that he had been with his girlfriend when the murders occurred. The jury deliberated for seven and a half minutes before convicting him.

Danziger and Ochoa were each sentenced to life imprisonment. They served 12 years behind bars before being released. Had it not been for religious conversion of Achim Josef Marino, and his persistent efforts to prove his guilt, Richard Danziger and Christopher Ochoa would be in prison today, framed by the State and People of Texas.