Page 6
The Behrend Beacon
After 12 years in prison on murder
charge, law student helps free others
by Ruben Rosario
Knight Ridder Newspapers
After serving 12 years in prison for a murder
he didn't commit, Chris Ochoa has decided to
take the law make that law books into his
hands
Ochoa a Texas man exonerated with the help
of members of the University of Wisconsin Law
School's Innocence Project is now a first-year
law student at the school.
"For him to finish college and then enter law
school less than three years after his release
from prison, to me, is just simply amazing," said
Corey Tennison, now an assistant Scott County
prosecutor from Highland Park, Minn., who,
along with a team of fellow students and col
lege law professors, helped uncover evidence
that cleared Ochoa in a 15-year-old murder case.
"He's become a friend and an inspiration."
The curriculum so far "is pretty demanding,
but it's going well," says Ochoa, 36, who plans
to relocate and pursue a legal career in Madi
son, Wis., or the Twin Cities area. "That said, I
haven't gone through a winter up here yet."
Allegedly threatened with the death penalty
and to be served as "meat" for prison sex preda
tors, Ochoa, then a 22-year-old restaurant
worker with no criminal record, confessed to
taking part in a brutal rape-murder of a 20-year
old Texas woman in 1988. He was sentenced to
life.
"People ask me many times why I confessed
to something I didn't do, and it's difficult to ex
plain," Ochoa said in a Knight Ridder Newspa
pers interview two years ago. "But I was a very
timid young man then. And if you know any
thing about Texas, you know right away that
the death penalty is a very real threat."
In 1996, a convicted robber confessed to the
murder in a letter he sent to Austin police and
then-Gov. GeorgeW. Bush's office. The Wiscon
sin project uncovered the existence of the letter
and other case discrepancies after Ochoa wrote
to them about his plight. DNA tests confirmed
the letter-writer was the killer, and Ochoa was
released from prison in 2001.
While in prison, Ochoa took advantage of col
lege course work and entered a community col
lege in El Paso when he got out. He was ac
cepted to the University of Kansas Law School
last year, but Wisconsin made him an offer he
couldn't turn down: a full scholarship.
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Ochoa says he wants to return the favor by
volunteering for the project next year. He is also
attending an annual fund-raiser in Minneapolis
in support of the Innocence Project of Minne
sota, one of 31 mostly university-based pro
grams in the country that selectively review
post-conviction cases with the help of pro bono
lawyers, college professors and law students.
The 3-year-old state project is reviewing a
handful of murder cases, and is asking the state's
highest court next week to order an evidentiary
hearing on a 12-year old murder case.
The innocence project movement, signifi
cantly bolstered by the advent of DNA testing
and more scrutiny of criminal probes, has led
to the exoneration of at least 128 people
wrongly convicted of murders and other seri
ous crimes in recent years. A handful have been
death row inmates. It has also led to changes in
law and a review of police and prosecutorial
procedures at the early stages of a criminal in
vestigation in an attempt to more accurately fin
ger or eliminate suspects.
A reputable study conducted by an lowa Uni
versity professor found that showing a witness
six pictures at the same time led to
misidentifications because the person felt pres
sured to select the person who most closely re
sembled their assailant. Choices were made
even when the actual suspect wasn't included
in the line-up, according to the study conducted
by Dr. Gary Wells.
The project will have adult witnesses shown
look at pictures one at a time by an investigator
not connected to the case. Wells' study estimated
that such a procedure could reduce
misidentifications by up to a half. Cops in New
York, California and a few other states are also
conducting trial runs.
"It's worth trying," says Hennepin County At
torney Amy Klobuchar of the year-long project.
"We are interested in getting the bad people,
but also the right people."
Tennison, a former Mille Lacs assistant
county prosecutor who starts his new job on
Monday, says the lessons of the Ochoa case are
ones that need to be heeded by prosecutors as
well as defense attorneys.
"Prosecutors have a lot of discretion in charg
ing a case, or how it's handled," says Tennison.
"I'm not here to just win cases. I'm here to help
administer justice. And Chris is the best re
minder of that."
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