False testimony helped convict Fort Worth man, district attorney says. Will he be freed?
The Criminal Appeals Court of Texas has agreed to reconsider its 2019 decision to uphold a conviction of a Fort Worth man who was recently found to have been wrongly charged and excessively sentenced.
The decision could be the first step in Aaron Dyson’s release from prison.
Dyson, 40, was sentenced to 50 years in prison when he was 17 for shooting a man who had killed his best friend. While Dyson admits the shooting occurred, prosecutors at the time charged him with engaging in organized crime and presented false evidence that Dyson was a member of the R-13 gang, which enhanced the charge and sentencing guidelines. Dyson has spent the last two decades fighting for his innocence while vehemently denying he was a gang member.
In August, Steve Conder with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit reviewed Dyson’s case and found that Dyson was overcharged and his sentence was too long.
Wilson, Sheriff Bill Waybourn and State District Judge Mike Thomas signed a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles that asked it to reduce Dyson’s sentence to time served.
Gov. Greg Abbott denied Dyson’s clemency petition, according to Dyson’s attorney, Chris Self, who is a professor with the Thurgood Marshall School of Law Juvenile Lifers Program.
In an attempt to reopen Dyson’s case, Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson and Conder wrote to the appeals court last month. They asked it to reconsider its decision.
Wilson argued that the state violated Dyson’s due process rights during his trial by presenting false and misleading evidence.
Testimony by one man who said Dyson “claimed” R-13 membership was guided by the prosecution, Wilson wrote.
That man only recently came forward to say that he felt pressured by the prosecutor to imply Dyson was a gang member. He clarified that Dyson was just a “poser” and had never been accepted as a member of the gang. Other members said Dyson couldn’t join because he was white.
Evidence against Dyson included a moment when he called a man “homeboy.” An officer testified at Dyson’s 1997 trial that the term meant “fellow gang member.” Wilson wrote the prosecution misrepresented the term when it really means “good friend.”
Wilson also wrote that the only contested issues during Dyson’s trial was whether he was a R-13 member and whether he shot Joe Cruz in furtherance of that membership. Dyson’s identity as the shooter was never contested.
The appeals court said last week that it will now withdraw its 2019 order to uphold Dyson’s conviction and has moved the application to the lower trial court. An investigation will be done to determine if the testimony was misleading and whether Dyson would have been convicted of engaging in organized crime without it.
A hearing has been scheduled for the beginning of March, where Self said he and the prosecutor will present testimony and other evidence to prove Dyson is entitled to relief based on the wrongful conviction. The evidence will then be sent back to the appeals court, which will decide if it agrees with Dyson’s position.
If it does, it will decide what relief Dyson is entitled to.
“The desired outcome is for Aaron’s story to be heard and the appropriate charge to be applied,” Self said. “He is taking responsibility for what he did do and a maximum sentenced for that — aggravated assault — is 20 years.”
This is the first time, Self said, that a district attorney’s office agreed with his complaint of unlawful detention.
“A prosecutor should be seeking truth and justice and not convictions and in my opinion, Steve Conder exemplifies that and exemplifies what a prosecutor should be in Aaron’s case,” Self said. “I’m confident that once we get to this hearing, it’ll be plain to everybody that Aaron’s actions were motivated by grief and not by gangs.”
Dyson, who has already spent 23 years in prison, said that he shot Cruz on May 27, 1997, because Cruz had killed his best friend, Omar Alvarado, 17, during a fight over a girl.
Cruz survived the assault and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder. In 2017, Cruz wrote to the Board of Pardons and Paroles on Dyson’s behalf and asked that he be released.
This story was originally published February 16, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
