DALLAS - Prosecutors declared a man innocent Monday of a rape and robbery that put him in prison for 30 years, more time served than any other person in Texas exonerated by DNA.
DNA test results that came back barely a week after Cornelius Dupree Jr. was paroled in July excluded him as the person who attacked a Dallas woman in 1979, prosecutors said Monday. Dupree was just 20 when he was sentenced to 75 years in prison in 1980.
Now 51, he has spent more time wrongly imprisoned than any DNA-exonerated person in Texas, which has freed 41 wrongly convicted inmates through DNA since 2001 - more than any other state.
"Our Conviction Integrity Unit thoroughly re-investigated this case, tested the biological evidence and based on the results, concluded Cornelius Dupree did not commit this crime," Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said.
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Dupree is expected to have his conviction for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon overturned today at an exoneration hearing in a Dallas court.
There have been 21 DNA exonerations in Dallas since 2001, more than in any other county in the nation. Only two states - Illinois and New York - have freed more of the wrongly convicted through DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center representing Dupree that specializes in wrongful-conviction cases.
Dallas' record of DNA exonerations is unmatched nationally because the county crime lab maintains biological evidence even decades after a conviction, leaving samples available to test. In addition, Watkins has cooperated with innocence groups in reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates for DNA testing. Watkins, the first black DA in Texas history, has also pointed to what he calls "a convict-at-all-costs mentality" that he says permeated the DA's office before he arrived in 2007.
Dupree's 30 years in prison will surpass James Woodard's. Woodard spent more than 27 years in a Texas prison for a murder that he was cleared of in 2008.
The DNA testing in Dupree's case also excluded a second defendant, Anthony Massingill, who was subsequently convicted in another sexual-assault case and sentenced to life in prison. Massingill remains in prison but maintains his innocence. DNA testing in that second case is ongoing.
