I spent years in prison for crime I didn’t commit. This bill could have prevented it

I spent almost 19 years behind bars for a murder I did not commit.

The victim, Sharon McLane, was a friend of mine, and we’d spent Thanksgiving together a few weeks before she was found stabbed 57 times in her apartment in December 1996. Neighbors reported seeing a strange white man with a cowboy hat leaving her apartment complex within the time police belived the crime was committed.

Even though I am Black and was at work during the suspected timeframe, police charged me after they learned that I’d visited Sharon a few days earlier.

At my trial, prosecutors presented no direct evidence, forensic or otherwise, tying me to the crime. A jailhouse informant, John O’Brien, testified that I confessed to McLane’s murder while we were both incarcerated in Tarrant County. He told the jury that he’d never acted as an informant before implicating me or “offered” to help the state in any other case.

Witnesses who expect leniency or other benefits for their cooperation have a strong incentive to lie. Informant testimony is the leading cause of wrongful convictions nationwide. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, jailhouse informants have contributed to at least 13 wrongful convictions in Texas, including mine; we spent more than 150 combined years in prison for crimes we didn’t commit.

Rep. Matt Krause understands that no Texan should have their freedom taken from them the way I did, and he’s taking bold action to reform the system that allowed it to happen.

“There have been too many instances in Texas of jailhouse informant testimony being used to falsely convict innocent Texans like John Nolley,” said Krause, a Fort Worth Republican.

His legislation, HB2631, would require a judge to review the reliability of jailhouse informant testimony before it can be used in the courtroom for serious violent cases. It would also require judges to issue cautionary jury instructions if such testimony is admitted. The Texas House just passed this bill, and Krause and I urge the Senate to do the same.

When the Innocence Project began investigating my case in 2006, new prosecutors worked with the group’s expert lawyers to get to the truth. In 2015, Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney Sharen Wilson created a “conviction integrity unit” within her office to reinvestigate cases such as mine.

My big break came when the investigation uncovered a trove of documents that had not been disclosed to my defense lawyer. They showed that O’Brien had lied when he said he had never been an informant before. He’d not only served as a witness in another murder case that same year, he had also offered to testify against more than 10 other defendants in exchange for a lighter sentence.

While judges understand how the incentivized information system works, jurors wrongly assume that prosecutors have special knowledge that a jailhouse witness is telling the truth. Just like paid expert witnesses, jailhouse witnesses are often compensated by the state and coached on their “insider” testimony in ways that can sway juries.

My sons were just one and four years old when I was wrongly convicted. I wasn’t able to watch them grow up to be the fine young men they are today.

Nothing can make up for lost time, but enacting Krause’s bill would be a big step toward ensuring that unreliable jailhouse testimony can no longer rob innocent Texans of their lives and liberty.