This dude wants to stop the injustice of corrupt investigators and prosecutors!


Wrongly-convicted man hopes to be a prosecutor.
Christopher Ochoa is scheduled to graduate Friday from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.

MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) -- On Christmas Eve 1996, Christopher Ochoa went back to his Texas prison cell and pressed a razor blade to his forearm.

He was serving a life sentence for a murder he did not commit and was ready to end it all.

But Ochoa didn't follow through. And on Friday, he will have a new life awaiting him when he graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School -- the same institution that rescued him from his worst nightmare.

Ochoa, now 39, was the first person exonerated by the Wisconsin Innocence Project, a UW law school course that investigates possible wrongful convictions.

"He was this sort of caged animal and the contrast now with him getting a law degree, the contrast is just amazing," said John Pray, the project's co-director.

Ochoa and another man, Richard Danzinger, were convicted in the 1988 rape and murder of Nancy DePriest, a 20-year-old Pizza Hut worker in Austin, Texas. He was 22 when he was found guilty through a confession he says detectives forced him to make up. He spent 12 years behind bars before DNA tests proved someone else killed her.

Ochoa, who grew up in El Paso, hopes to one day become a prosecutor so he can control investigations. He calls American justice the best system in the world, but says corrupt investigators and prosecutors have broken it.

Ochoa said he still has nightmares about detectives, stemming from the stop-and-start, two-day interrogation that led to his confession. He said detectives threatened him with the death penalty. At one point a detective threw a chair across the room, narrowly missing his head, he said. When he finally gave up and gave them what they wanted, they had to fill in details in his statement themselves, he said.

The first night in his cell was "the loneliest feeling in the world," he said. "I asked myself what had I done? Why?"

Then came the night in 1996. Ochoa had not yet received any Christmas cards and had reached the mark of around eight years when most lifers snap, he says matter-of-factly. It drove him to the brink of killing himself.

The only thing that stopped him was the teachings of his mother and the nuns in his catechism classes. He had no right to take a life, even his own, he said, and lifted the razor from his arm.

Then, Ochoa started hearing rumors that someone else had confessed to DePriest's slaying. He had heard about the Wisconsin Innocence Project and wrote a letter begging for help.

"I'd given up on everybody," Ochoa said. "I said, 'Please, I don't have anywhere to turn to. Please help me."'

The project took the case because of the other confession and the potential of DNA evidence, project co-director Keith Findley said. Students tracked down biological evidence and DNA tests eventually ruled Ochoa out and pointed to a man already serving a life sentence for other violent crimes.

Ochoa was freed in January 2001. Danzinger also was released.

Ochoa had earned two associate degrees through correspondence courses and had almost completed his bachelor's degree when he was released. A University of Texas-El Paso business law class and talks he gave at different law schools about his experience inspired him to become part of the system that had put him away, he said.

"The funny thing is I could not stand lawyers and cops," he said.

Last summer, Ochoa served as an assistant prosecutor in the Green County district attorney's office. He said he would love to have that job so he can tell the police to do a better job before charging someone.

"You don't want to push an innocent man into prison to further your political career," he said.

Well, more power to him. He could be aspiring to join an innocence project but instead wants to join our ranks.

The Innocence Project doesn't offer Health Care Coverage and a retirement plan.

All kidding aside, we're all under the same authority, "to see that justice is done", which should comfortably fit in with his mindset.

quote:

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Ochoa, who grew up in El Paso, hopes to one day become a prosecutor so he can control investigations.

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"Control investigations"?? Yeah, I would have liked that, too, when I was a trial prosecutor. Too bad it almost never seemed to work out that way.

Maybe he watched too much "Law & Order" while he was behind bars. I fear that he'll be sorely disappointed in the limit of his new "powers," but if that's what he wants to do with his life, so be it.

The reporter interviewed Ochoa, who is from El Paso, over the phone on Thursday. I guess he won't be joining our ranks after all:


"[Ochoa] said he wants to practice property law.

"'Criminal law is getting very emotional for me. I get upset or very depressed. Being an attorney, you really can't have emotions. You wouldn't be a very good attorney,' Ochoa said."

The article in the El Paso Times

While I feel confident Ochoa would never be one of my co-workers, it's a good thing he realizes that prosecution may not be an appropriate career for him. You could look like this: if a person is so weak-willed that he confesses to a brutal murder that he didn't commit, plus, implicates an innocent friend, so that the friend ends up with his head bashed in in prison, how could that person ever be expected to have enough backbone to be a prosecutor? Or, here's someone who along with some nut who was willing to confess and help pull off some big scam on the system, is really a capital murder walking the street. Either way, I don't want to work with him. Hopefully, none of us will.