Gary Alvin Richard; Wrongly Convicted Man Released after 22 Years
By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
They are called “experts.” Prosecutors parade them into court dressed in respectful suit ware and carry resumes packed with a laundry list of degrees. They then testify about the science of “forensic evidence” in ways that more often confuse rather than clarify the issues being tried in a criminal case. Worst yet, many of these “CSI” experts testify falsely, or in misleading fashion, about test results they either did not perform correctly or whose results they manufactured to fit a given prosecutorial objective. Incompetent or unethical “forensic experts” are a criminal defense attorney’s worst nightmare.
The Houston Chronicle (April 25, 2009) carried a report about yet another Harris County case where an potentially innocent person spent 22 years in prison for a rape and robbery he did not commit because of false testimony and faulty “forensic evidence” from the now thoroughly discredited Houston Police Department’s (HPD) crime lab. The case involves Gary Alvin Richard who was released after 22 years in prison on his personal recognizance. Mr. Richard was convicted by a jury in connection with a 1987 attack on a nursing student who was abducted from a local Laundromat, robbed, and taken to an abandoned apartment where she was repeatedly raped.
During a seven-month period after the attack, the victim called the police twice to report that she had seen the man who assaulted her. The HPD did not respond to these calls. Seven months after the attack the victim called the police department a third time to report that she had just seen her attacker in a store. This time the police responded to the call and arrested Richard. Although Richard had a minor criminal history involving petty drug use, there was no violence in his record.
The victim’s mistaken identification of Richard was supported by forensic evidence developed by the HPD crime lab. New tests conducted on that same evidence on April 24 revealed that the crime lab analyst not only lied to the jury but withheld evidence that was exculpatory to Richard. (more…)
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