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They also praised Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins, whose office joined the Innocence Project to investigate innocence claims and expedite exonerations. More prisoners have been cleared in Dallas County than in any other U.S. county.
"Dallas has a head start on the rest of the country," said Robinson, who spent a decade in prison and became a lawyer after his exoneration. "Do not let his term pass away. Do not let the voice of reason and justice be silenced because they do not like to look at the faces they tried to throw away."In the afternoon session, Cory Session dabbed away tears while remembering his older brother, Timothy Cole. Cole was wrongly convicted of raping a woman in Lubbock and died in prison a decade ago. His name was later cleared when another man admitted to the crime. This year, in the Tim Cole Act, the Texas Legislature passed a law boosting payments to the wrongly convicted from $50,000 to $80,000 for every year behind bars."Some say of the exonerees, they are millionaires," Session said, with many of the wrongly convicted sitting in the audience. "I say you are heirs to millions who have been wrongly convicted. Millions didn’t make it, but you are one of the lucky ones who did. But there had to be a sacrificial lamb who stepped up by the name of Tim Cole."The conference came a week after the work of UTA student Natalie Ellis helped exonerate Claude Simmons and Christopher Scott in a Dallas County murder. On Friday, the men thanked Ellis from the stage. Several other exonerees spoke directly to students in the audience."Students did most of this," said Steven Phillips, who served 25 years in prison for rape before his exoneration in Dallas last year. "Things like that give us hope."TIM MADIGAN, 817-390-7544
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