Fort Worth man convicted of wrong crime in 1997 continues fight for innocence
Aaron Dyson thought that after 25 years of being tangled in the criminal justice system, his fight was over.
But on Friday, his entanglement continued.
Dyson, 42, was sentenced to 50 years in prison when he was 17 after he shot a man who had killed his best friend. While Dyson admits the shooting occurred, prosecutors charged him with engaging in organized crime and presented false evidence that Dyson was a member of the R-13 gang and that the shooting was gang related, which enhanced the charge and sentencing guidelines. The man he shot survived and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murder.
Dyson was never a gang member and said the shooting was an irrational decision made out of grief and anger, which is what his defense team argued during his 1998 trial.
After spending more than two decades fighting for his innocence and trying to overturn the organized crime charge, Dyson found relief through the Tarrant County district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit.
Until Friday.
Dyson and his new wife, his mother and a couple of friends met at the Tarrant County Criminal District Courtroom 4 where the district attorney’s office anticipated entering a plea agreement on aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, which Dyson should have originally been charged with 25 years ago.
The plea would have sentenced Dyson to eight years of time served. He spent an extra 16 years in prison.
But Dyson declined to enter a plea. The case will now move forward to a trial.
“The state had an opportunity in 1997 to apply the appropriate charge and try me on that charge and they chose not to,” Dyson said after pleading not guilty. “They chose to use false testimony to convict me of that higher charge and I suffered greatly from that. I did 24 years in prison for a crime I didn’t commit.”
After the Conviction Integrity Unit found that Dyson was inappropriately charged, it asked the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals to review the case. The court vacated his engaging in organized crime charge last year and Dyson was released from prison in May.
The case was returned to the lower court to be resolved without the issue that caused the reversal – meaning, the lower court is now applying the correct charge 25 years later.
“I lost my teens, my 20s, my 30s in prison,” Dyson said. “So my feeling is this isn’t right. If anything, we should be here today for a dismissal.”
Since his release, Dyson has tried to put the last two decades behind him. But being stuck in prison for 16 extra years means he doesn’t have a 401K, any savings or health insurance. Finding a full-time job has been nearly impossible with “felon” plastered over his name.
“I’ve been working whenever I can,” he said. “I do some stone work. It’s not a steady job and I would like to find something more stable for myself and for my family.”
Dyson, who once dreamed of having a family of his own, reconnected with his high school crush, Brooke Zaragoza, after he was released.
“I ran into her at BoomerJack’s and she walked up and hugged me and said, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ and she looked so gorgeous. We started talking and we hit it off,” he said.
During that time, he moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to install fiber optic cables. Being away from Zaragoza and his family proved to be too hard after 24 years locked up. He moved back and married Zaragoza on Feb. 11.
His not guilty plea wasn’t to disparage the current district attorney’s office, Dyson said. He said he respects their work and efforts to correct the wrongdoings of the attorneys before them. But he feels fixing the problem is too late, and he’s suffered enough.
“Does this court not agree that I have already gone through enough?” Dyson wrote in a statement he had hoped, but wasn’t able to, read during the hearing. “Think about your worst day and times that by a hundred and you know that was my life every single day for 24 years.”
