STORY: "Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declares Sonia Cacy actually innocent," by reporter Brantley Hargrove, published by Texas Monthly on November 3, 2016.
SUB-HEADING: "It’s a victory two decades in the making for one of Texas’ seminal arson cases."
GIST: "Sonia Cacy, who was wrongfully convicted by a Fort Stockton jury in 1993 of burning her uncle to death, has at last been declared actually innocent.
On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted relief on
several grounds, concluding her attorney had failed her at trial, and
that the evidence used to convict her was not only false, but rooted in
unreliable science. One of the seminal arson cases in Texas
history, Cacy’s ordeal has entangled the state fire marshall’s office
and nearly all of the country’s top arson experts, many of whom have
maintained for years that the prosecution’s witness had badly
misinterpreted a test for accelerants. Cacy was paroled in 1998 based on
the work of a chemist named Gerald Hurst, but she has fought to clear her name ever since. In recent years, the evidence against her
has collapsed. In 2014 Pecos County District Attorney Rod Ponton, whose
terms ends in January after a primary defeat,
saw his own arson expert dispute the very premise of the conviction.
Then, the now-retired Bexar County toxicologist who initially testified
at Cacy’s 1993 trial to the presence of an accelerant on uncle Bill
Richardson’s clothing dropped a bombshell: his lab had been
contaminated. Ponton’s case appeared to be on its last
legs when the jurist assigned to make a recommendation to the Court of
Criminal Appeals grilled him during oral arguments in June.
Judge Bert Richardson (no relation to Bill) managed to elicit from
Ponton an admission that he didn’t know whether an accelerant had been
present at the scene at all. As the evidence crumpled, Ponton passed the
case over to State Prosecuting Attorney Lisa McMinn in July. Once she’d
had a chance to evaluate the evidence, she threw her support behind
Cacy’s bid to clear her name. “Our office
decided to join the defense in asking the Court to set aside the
conviction in this case because we believed that was the correct result,
based on the new evidence,” McMinn told Texas Monthly. Today’s opinion from the CCA is pro
forma, but after long years of fighting it has delivered to Cacy the
words she’s sought since her release from prison nearly two decades ago.
The case could technically go back to trial, but the odds of that are
about as high as snow flurries in a Fort Stockton July. “There has never
been a case in Texas where Court of Criminal Appeals has said
somebody’s actually innocent and a DA was crazy enough to retry them,”
says Gary Udashen, Cacy’s lawyer.........Udashen will now begin the process of
seeking compensation from the comptroller for the years his client spent
locked up for a crime the CCA now affirms was simply a tragic accident.
Her uncle was a heavy smoker, and arson experts have always suspected
the deadly fire—and Cacy’s ordeal—began with nothing more than a
cigarette."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/texas-court-criminal-appeals-declares-sonia-cacy-actually-innocent/PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
