In 1983, Green was sentenced to 75 years in prison for the rape of a Houston woman. His conviction was based on faulty eyewitness identifation, says his attorney, Bob Wicoff.
27 years in prison is the longest time that any innocent Texan has spent in prison before being exonerated. If he is freed, Green will become the second innocent man from Harris County to be released from prison THIS WEEK. Last Friday, Allen Wayne Porter was also released based on new DNA testing after serving 19 years behind bars for a rape he didn't commit.
In this case, justice prevailed. Hallelujah. It's terrible that an innocent man spent such a large portion of his life jailed for someone else's crime, but at least this story has a happy ending. If this had been a death penalty case, the reality is he probably would have been executed 20 years ago. This is Harris County's second exoneration in a week. How many more innocent men are sitting in unjustified prison cells? I wonder. How many are on death row right now? If we want to see justice prevailing like this and innocent men being handed their lives back, we must have a moratorium on the death penalty. The next innocent man might not be so lucky.
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