What's the Big Deal about a couple of people in prison?
Texas Inmate's Confession Slips Through the Cracks
By JIM YARDLEY
OUSTON, Oct. 16 — The letter began "Re:
Murder Confession." It was written by a
Texas prison inmate who said "my conscience
sickens me" because two men were serving life
sentences in prison for a rape and murder that the
inmate claimed he had committed.
The inmate, Achim Josef Marino, a born-again
Christian, made the confession in a February 1998
letter to Gov. George W. Bush. Mr. Marino told how
evidence linking him to the crime, including the
victim's keys, could be found at his parents' house.
He said he had written a letter to the police in
Austin, Tex., a year earlier but had received no
response. He wanted Mr. Bush to intervene, even
saying the governor was "legally and morally
obligated" to do so.
"I tell you this sir," wrote Mr. Marino, who is serving
three life sentences for other convictions, "I did this
awful crime and I was alone."
Nothing, however, was done. The two inmates Mr.
Marino mentioned, Christopher Ochoa and Richard
Danziger, remain in prison, a decade after their
conviction.
Recent DNA tests, in fact, confirmed that semen
taken from victim did not match Mr. Ochoa or Mr.
Danziger, several people knowledgeable about the
case said. A sample of Mr. Marino's DNA is now
being tested to see if it does match.
"This is all unprecedented," said District Attorney
Ronald Earle of Travis County, whose office
reopened the case earlier this year and is working
with lawyers for the two inmates convicted of the
crime.
Mike Jones, a spokesman for Governor Bush's
office, confirmed that the letter arrived in 1998 and
remains on file. Mr. Jones said about 1,400 letters
from inmates were received by the governor's
office every year, and standard policy calls for
forwarding them to the appropriate law
enforcement agency. But, he said, Mr. Marino's letter fell into a different category
because it indicated that a copy was also being sent to Mr. Earle. In such cases, Mr.
Jones said, a letter would not be forwarded, to "avoid duplication."
"It was already in the hands of the law enforcement agencies," said Mr. Jones,
adding that Mr. Bush never saw the letter.
But, Mr. Earle said, the confession never arrived in the mail at his office.
Prosecutors on his staff were later made aware of it by the Austin Police
Department, which had received it. Mr. Earle said he had no idea how the police
received the letter, unless perhaps Mr. Marino mistakenly mailed it to them
instead of his office.
Told that Mr. Earle's office had not received the letter in the mail but from the local
police, Mr. Jones said, "We're not sure how it came there, or how they got it, but
they got it."
Barry Scheck, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva
University in New York and a co-director of the Innocence Project, a program that
uses DNA evidence to overturn murder convictions, said his group and another
Innocence Project affiliated with the University of Wisconsin became involved in
the case in late 1999.
"This case should shock anyone," Mr. Scheck said. He chided Mr. Bush's office for
failing to act on the letter and said the case undermined the governor's oft-stated
confidence in the Texas criminal justice system.
"This has got to tell Governor Bush that he can't have confidence that all these
death penalties and other convictions in his state are sound and just because
officials have proclaimed them sound," Mr. Scheck said.
Several weeks ago, Mr. Earle became one of the first prosecutors in the nation to
announce that his office would voluntarily re-examine more than 400 murder and
rape cases involving DNA evidence. In this particular case, he said his office was
still making certain that there were no connections between the two inmates and
Mr. Marino that could cast doubt on the confession.
The crime in question is the October 1988 rape and murder of Nancy DePriest, a
20-year-old employee of a Pizza Hut in Austin. Mr. Ochoa, then 23, was convicted
in 1990, eventually confessing to the crime after changing his story several times.
He was given a life sentence, rather than the death penalty, in exchange for
testifying against Mr. Danziger, who maintained during his trial that Mr. Ochoa
and police detectives were lying.
Mr. Scheck said Mr. Ochoa confessed because police detectives interrogated him
for 12 hours, threatened him and warned that he could be executed, an accusation
denied by the Austin police.
Mr. Marino wrote his first confessions in 1996, including two to the Austin police
department and one each to the local branch of the American Civil Liberties Union
and the local newspaper, Then, in 1998, Mr. Marino wrote to Mr. Bush, explaining
how in prison he had completed the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program and
had found Christianity.
"The Christian life-style and value system demands that I do this," Mr. Marino
wrote, misspelling some words, "even at the loss of my life, which I'm fully
pre-pared to lose and expect to loose. I'am deeply sickened, disgusted and
mortified for the crime I have committed, as well as my past life."
He described buying the gun used in the murder through a classified newspaper
advertisement. He also wrote that Ms. DePriest's keys and bank deposit bags
from the Pizza Hut were at his parents' house in El Paso. Austin police confirmed
that investigators collected evidence from the home of Mr. Marino's parents in
1996, after his initial letter. Police officials would not say what was taken, but Mr.
Earle confirmed that the evidence was being examined at the state crime
laboratory.
Austin police also said an investigator visited Mr. Ochoa in 1998 after his
department received Mr. Marino's letter that was addressed to Governor Bush. An
official said Mr. Ochoa was questioned about the case again and continued to
maintain that he had committed the crime. Mr. Scheck, however, said that Mr.
Ochoa was simply fearful that investigators were trying to implicate him in
another crime. |
