Steven Phillips sits at his Dallas kitchen table, which is covered with letters from prisoners, piled high with drafts of his book and holds the typewriter he had during his 25 years in prison.
With an ashtray in front of him, he smokes his morning cigarette. His leathered face and tired eyes are a stark contrast to his bulging biceps, one of which is tattooed with the word “MOM.”
Phillips was recently exonerated through DNA testing and other revealing evidence after being convicted of committing a string of sex crimes over 25 years ago.
“When you wake up in a cell, the first thing you do is see the door and realize that the door is locked, and then you realize, ‘I’m innocent,'” he said.
Exoneration through DNA testing is the newest trend in courts across the country. There have been 225 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the US, the first one in 1989. But, in Texas everything is bigger and this case is no different. Currently, in Texas, 37 people have been exonerated through DNA testing. Of those 37 people, 19 are from Dallas County, more than any other state with the exceptions of Illinois and New York.
Phillips was convicted of rape and burglary in 1982 and 1983 in two trials stemming from the same incident. He was also charged with, and later pled guilty to receive a lesser sentence, with nine other identical crimes that occurred in Dallas.
Phillips’ eyewitness described her attacker as having “piercing blue eyes.” Phillips’ eyes are green.
“I am sure she [the eyewitness] believed what she was saying was true,” Phillips said. “It was not out of malice.”
At the trial, Phillips argued that he had been misidentified and also presented an alibi, but was convicted anyway. For each of those trials, Phillips was given a 30-year sentence in prison.
“I would tell anybody who would listen,” Phillips said of his innocence. “But I got as much help from my celly [cellmate] as I would anyone else.”
While in prison, Phillips would send out hundreds of letters to lawyers begging them to take his case.
“I would get letters back and I would scan the letter until I found the word ‘unfortunately,'” Phillips said. He now has a team of lawyers that includes Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck and Innocence Project Staff Attorney Jason Kreag.
In April 2001, the Texas senate passed an emergency bill, Chapter 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, the DNA law. This law states, “A convicted person may submit to the convicting court a motion for forensic DNA testing of evidence containing biological material.” Phillips was one of the first people to file this type of motion, it took years; the District Attorney fought him every step of the way and Phillips’ motion was eventually denied.
Phillips immediately filed an appeal that got off to a rocky start when the public defender assigned to his case, April Smith, filed an Andrews Brief. In an Andrews Brief, the attorney of record states that they believe there is no merit to the case and asks the court to be discharged as the attorney on the case.
“I don’t think they’re evil people,” Phillips said of Smith and the entire Dallas Bar. “But there was that culture of prosecution back in the day and the Dallas Bar perhaps unwittingly allowed that.”
Director of Human Rights Education at Southern Methodist University, Rick Halperin, believes that public defense in the US needs to be one people can rely on since so many people accused of crimes do not have the financial means to provide their own defense attorney.
“We need a system that gives people a fair and competent defense,” Halperin said.
In 2006, Craig Watkins was elected as the new Dallas County District Attorney and in 2007, his office agreed to Phillips’ motion for DNA testing. Not only was Phillips’ innocence proven, but the DNA evidence led to the man who actually committed the crimes Phillips was convicted of, Sidney Alvin Goodyear.
“When Watkins was elected, I saw the hearts [of the people] in the legal system change,” Phillips said.
“If we focus on the true meaning of DA…it doesn’t say we are supposed to seek a conviction or be tough on crime. It says we are to seek justice,” Watkins said in a panel discussion at SMU last November.
Over the last year, an investigation into the prosecution of Phillips’ case was done. Information was uncovered which showed that police ignored and concealed evidence that supported Phillips’ innocence. One of the victims of Goodyear’s crimes identified him as the perpetrator. However, the prosecution had tunnel vision, and were only focused on Phillips. Phillips’ attorneys were not even told of Goodyear.
According to the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the justice system, 25 of the 32 exonerations in Texas involved eyewitness misidentification. Phillips is, so far, one of 15 people prosecuted by former famed DA Henry Wade to be exonerated.
“Law and order prosecution at any cost to include withholding evidence and not addressing all the evidence is over,” Phillips said.
Halperin says that the people freed through DNA exoneration in the US are the “lucky ones;” other countries do not have access to DNA testing facilities, nor does their legal system allow for DNA testing.
For Halperin, freeing innocent people through DNA evidence needs to be a global trend, not just one that exists in the states. Yet, before introducing DNA testing and DNA facilities to other countries, legal systems must change.
“[Change in] the system would come first,” Halperin said. “You need a legal system in place into which DNA can fit, rather than molding a system around DNA evidence.”
The trend of DNA evidence being the new gold standard of evidence is already coming at odds with a string of court cases across the country that question the credibility of DNA profiles.
In July, the Los Angeles Times ran an article chronicling Kathryn Troyer’s 2001 discovery in Arizona’s DNA database of the inaccuracies in DNA testing. Troyer ran a cross reference of the 65,000 DNA profiles in the Arizona database and discovered that about 100 of them matched at nine or more of the 13 locations on chromosomes, often used to distinguish people.
The FBI estimates that the chance of two unrelated people sharing any of these 13 genetic markers to be as remote as one in 113 billion.
In the years after Troyer’s discovery, there has been a push by scientific and legal experts to test the accuracy of the FBI’s official statistics on DNA profiling using the nearly 6 million profiles in CODIS, the national DNA database.
Arguments made by the FBI have influenced courts in California and other states to block this type of search, but in some states, judges have overruled their objections.
Troyer told the L.A. Times she believed that a nine-locus match on a DNA profile could point investigators to the wrong person. If DNA testing is placed under scrutiny in the near future, what will people exonerated through DNA evidence such as Phillips do?
Watkins is all for DNA scrutiny.
“We don’t have anything to hide,” he said. “Let’s figure out how to do it right.”
Public defender and founder of the Innocence Project of Texas, Michelle Moore, says it all comes down to how thoroughly each case is investigated. With DNA evidence slowly being scrutinized, Moore hopes Y-STR testing, a more efficient way of testing DNA will be used.
“We’re going to get more accurate tests,” Moore said. “[Hopefully] it will be approved and paid for by the state.”
Halperin’s main issue with DNA testing is not its possible scrutiny, but that most people cannot financially afford the testing and that it is only allowed in 44 states. Before questioning the validity of something that is still considered infallible in many states, give all people the financial and judicial freedom to use DNA testing, he says.
“There first needs to be an altering of the mindset of the system,” Halperin said. “Most of these people do not have access to funds for this type of defense.”
As for Phillips, he is not worried.
“There is no question [in regards] to my innocence,” he said.
Right now, Phillips is concentrating on writing a book about his experience. His first draft is complete and will be sent off to a publisher.
Phillips says he has been given everything he could ever imagine in life and more.
“What do you do after happily ever after?” Phillips said. “I’m actually kind of scared.”
