That sucks it took this long for this guy.
Man who spent 30 years in jail for armed robbery is finally proved innocent after DNA test
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.
By DAVID GARDNER
