Associated Press

Oct. 9, 2008, 9:17PM

DALLAS � DNA testing has reaffirmed the guilt of a man convicted in a 1993 Dallas capital murder case.

The Dallas County District Attorney's Office announced Thursday that DNA test results were unfavorable to Henry Jay Bell, who was sentenced to life in prison for the sexual assault and murder of a neighborhood acquaintance.

The district attorney's office says DNA testing on blood found on the knife used in the stabbing conclusively linked Bell to the crime. The Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center specializing in wrongful convictions, paid for the testing costs.

There have been 20 men in Dallas County since 2001 whose convictions have been overturned based on DNA testing of evidence, although one of those men will be retried by prosecutors.

It's all here:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/6050039.html

(1) Hmph. That's odd. I usually get emailed press releases from the Innocence Project when they get favorable DNA results in a case. I guess this one just got lost in my spam filter.

(2)

"According to witnesses, the victim was seen entering the passenger side of Bell's car in the early morning hours on the date of the offense, and moments later the car was seen parked in a vacant lot where it began rocking and there were sounds of a struggle coming from the car. Another witness who had met Bell one month before the offense testified that Bell had previously driven her to the exact same wooded area to have sex where the murder victim's body was found." (from DMN Crime Blog*)

But wait -- I thought eyewitness testimony was "inherently unreliable"? That's what all the so-called experts tell me in their news articles. Now I'm really confused.

* - A blog? The only coverage this gets in Dallas is on a newspaper's minor blog?!? What does that tell you about the media these days?

Doonesbury is having a great series about reporters who have been downgraded to blogging.

Shannon: You are right. I guess it really should be big news when someone fails to be exonerated by DNA in Dallas. EXTRA EXTRA PROSECUTION GETS IT RIGHT!

And if you like blog news, then you are gonna love twittering news. Check out the latest here.

I've been hearing more and more about this twitter thing, and I recently came across an article about in the Washington Post, of all places. Hmmmm . . . I thought to myself. The Washington Post is talking about it, so there must be something to it. And that article had a link to this explanatory video on YouTube. After watching the video, one question came loudly to my mind: "Are you blankety-blank kidding me?" Watch the video, and then you can decide for yourself what the world is coming to.

Twitter in Plain English

Twitter seems similar to the status updates on Facebook, except that FB has a lot more stuff. This post is 140 characters including spaces.

Another inmates wastes your time and money:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D9B2IP601.html

DNA proves guilt of Dallas man claiming innocence

10/01/2009

Associated Press

"DNA testing has confirmed the guilt of a Texas man who had claimed that he was wrongly convicted.

"The Dallas County District Attorney's office announced Thursday that DNA testing showed Timothy Hill was guilty of a 1997 sexual assault for which he pleaded guilty to a year later. He received a 20-year sentence.

* * *

"Dallas County leads the nation in DNA exonerations of the wrongly convicted, having seen 21 guilty verdicts set aside since 2001. Most of the county's DNA testing has confirmed the original guilty verdicts."

I found that last sentence particularly interesting. I must have missed the big investigative report on that angle.

A man charged with aggravated perjury was found guilty and sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison. He was indicted on the perjury charge, a third-degree felony, last year after he was accused of saying in a writ of habeas corpus that he was innocent of the driving while intoxicated charge and that two breath tests indicated his blood alcohol concentration level was below 0.01, according to the indictment.

Details.