Man wrongfully convicted of rape now a free man

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

(10/09/07 - HOUSTON) (KTRK) -- After spending more than 14 years behind bars for a rape he did not commit, a Houston man is now out of prison. Waiting on the other side were his family and friends, and a fiancé back in Georgia who has stood by his side the entire time.

Ronald Taylor is spending his first night in a long time as a free man. He was released from prison after DNA tests proved he was innocent.

Taylor entered Houston's city council chambers a free man, and a man focused on informing council members about justice delayed for potentially hundreds of inmates who may be falsely convicted, as he was just weeks ago.

"I was blessed enough to receive help, but there's a lot of people that can't get help," Taylor explained. "They don't have finances, they don't have anybody to help them."

In Taylor's case, the DNA evidence that could have freed him long ago simply wasn't tested by HPD's crime lab. Taylor says that's a mistake that never should happen again.

"They've just got to do a better job," he said. "They've got to look deeper. Because I'm not mistaken, the same guy that they now say committed the crime, was the same guy that they found from the beginning. They found him from the very beginning. They just didn't go pick him up. They didn't look for him. Nothing."

For his family, the last 14 years was an awful experience. Taylor's mother Dorothy Henderson says she believes in the system, but echoes her son's call to fix it.

"So no one else will have to go through this again," she said. "He lost most of his family to death while he was in there. Hopefully no other parent will have to go through what I went through."

As for city council, promises were made to fix the problems the crime lab had and continues to have. Nothing concrete happened today, except Ronald Taylor gained his freedom. The one thing city council focused on was the creation of a 'DNA master' -- someone who would oversee how investigators gather forensic evidence from crime scenes.
(Copyright © 2007, KTRK-TV)

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