Photo courtesy patlykos.comA non-working DNA lab and lack of proper policies were among the biggest contributors to the wrongful incarceration of Ricardo Rachell, District Attorney Pat Lykos said today at a press conference in the Criminal Justice Center.Lykos and Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt apologized to the public and to Rachell, who was exonerated by DNA evidence in 2008 after serving five years of a 40-year sentence for child molestation. (Andrew Wayne Hawthorne, who in 2008 pleaded gu
Photo courtesy Pat Lykos for DANot content to throw two of her prosecutors into the blender last week, Harris County DA Pat Lykos has decided to turn her guns on yet another unimportant bloc of voters - illegal immigrants.The Chron picks up the tale:"Four senior assistant district attorneys, speaking anonymously to protect their jobs, said Jim Leitner, District Attorney Pat Lykos' first assistant, discussed the plan with about 50 prosecutors during a meeting last Friday. Under the plan, defendan
A man convicted of rape in 1987, based largely on questionable HPD crime lab data, and sentenced to life in prison is expected to be released on bond Thursday, according to the Harris County District Attorney's Office. Recent DNA test results show "discrepancies between the new tests and evidence presented" at the trial of Gary Richard, 53, according to the office's press release. Richard's is the first of approximately 160 cases tied to allegedly faulty HPD crime lab analysis to go to court on
