Texas inmates to get cases reviewed

A group of state prison inmates got word Monday of something so hopeful to them that many were skeptical: Harris County was willing to appoint a lawyer to review whether they were wrongfully convicted. All they had to do was say yes.

The 19 inmates were the first of 180 cases identified as potentially flawed because of shoddy blood analysis work by the Houston Police Department crime lab.

"They were a little suspicious at first," said the defense lawyer, Bob Wicoff. "But most of them were quickly on board once they realized what we were trying to do."

All but one agreed to the review.

Harris County criminal district judges this month announced plans to review the 180 body fluid cases identified in a final report from a special investigator hired by the city of Houston to investigate the lab.

The judges appointed Wicoff to a three-lawyer panel that will lead the review. A retired state judge will preside over the probe.

With the inmates gathered at the state prison in Tennessee Colony, Wicoff talked with each of them privately from a Houston courtroom 171 miles away via videoconference.

Only one defendant, Marvin Gibbs, serving a 60-year sentence for murder, said he did not want his case investigated. But Wicoff said he still planned to review Gibbs' case because he wasn't certain Gibbs was competent to make such a decision.

"There really is no downside in an inmate being a part of it," he said.

But the review might find that the serology lab work played very little in the conviction of an inmate, prosecutor Marie Munier said. Serology is the study of body fluids, such as blood, semen or saliva.

"The question is, do we have anyone in there that faulty serology work played a part or has someone that is innocent in prison? That's the issue I'm concerned with," she said.

By Nov. 1, the panel will have repeated Monday's procedure with 160 inmates, Wicoff said.

Of the 180 cases identified, some of the inmates have been executed, and some might have been released from prison, he said.

The cases being reviewed, some which date to the 1980s, include several death row inmates and others convicted of violent crimes such as robbery and rape.

The Houston crime lab's work has been under scrutiny since 2002, when the DNA section was shut down. Inaccuracies were later found in four other lab divisions that test firearms, body fluids and controlled substances. The DNA section has since been reopened.

Three inmates have been released from prison because of mistakes by the lab: two men wrongfully convicted of rape, and another man convicted of kidnapping and rape was released pending a new trial.

Wicoff, who represented one of the three inmates who has been released, said he could not estimate how long the review might take.

"It's like moving a mountain. You have to start one rock at a time. I hope people will be patient," he said.