Innocent Man Gets 25 Years, Corrupt Prosecutor 10 Days

Story here. Excerpt:

Ten days in jail—not prison, only jail—for engineering the wrongful murder conviction of an innocent man who languished in prison nearly 25 years is the state of Texas’ idea of justice. That was the sentence handed down on former Williamson County, Texas, district attorney Ken Anderson, who will also surrender his law license and perform 500 hours of community service to settle allegations that he hid favorable evidence from Michael Morton, who was convicted of killing his wife in 1987.

Anderson avoided felony charges of tampering with evidence and pleaded only to contempt of court for lying to the judge during a pre-trial hearing by affirming that he no exculpatory evidence to hand over to Morton’s attorneys. In fact, Anderson had a transcript of a police interview with the victim’s mother, who said that the Mortons’ 3-year-old son had witnessed the killing, described the attacker as a monster and said that Michael Morton was not there at the time, and a police report that neighbors had seen suspicious behavior by an unknown driver of a green van who had parked and walked into the woods behind the Morton house several times before the crime.'