Jury awards wrongly convicted man $5 million
The Chronicle's Roma Khanna reports that a federal jury awarded George Rodriguez $5 million today as a result of his lawsuit against the city for wrongful conviction:
A federal jury today awarded $5 million to a Houston man who spent 17 years in prison in a kidnapping and rape case built on evidence from the troubled Houston Police Department crime lab that DNA testing later discredited.
George Rodriguez, 48, sued the city of Houston seeking compensation for his years of incarceration and lost earnings. His lawyers argued that city officials, namely former Mayor Lee P. Brown who was police chief during Rodriguez’s case, were deliberately indifferent to underfunding, understaffing and a lack of supervision at the crime lab, creating a risk that an innocent person could be convicted.
The Lee Brown era (or should that be error?) seemingly will never come to an end.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/25/09 08:08 PM | Print |
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