Fingerprint Could Prove Innocence For Deaf Inmate Stephen Brodie

Dallas district attorney's office says man was wrongly convicted in '90 case

07:29 AM CDT on Friday, September 24, 2010
By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News

The Dallas County district attorney's office says it will ask a judge on Monday to release a 39-year-old deaf man who prosecutors believe was wrongly convicted of sexually assaulting a child.

Stephen Matthew Brodie pleaded guilty in 1993 to abducting a 5-year-old girl from her Richardson home and making her perform a sex act in September 1990.

His attorney, Dallas County public defender Michelle Moore, said that Brodie was interrogated for 18 hours over eight days and only half of the time was there a sign language interpreter present.

"We believe this is not a true confession," Moore said. "Stephen speaks an entirely differently language."

Moore said Thursday that evidence now points to Brodie's innocence. She said the district attorney's office told her a fingerprint found at the scene matches that of 41-year-old Robert Warterfield, a convicted child rapist who in the mid-1990s was also named as a suspect in the "North Dallas rapist" attacks on nearly a dozen other children.

Warterfield could not be reached for comment. He pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault of a child in 1994 for abducting a teenage girl from her home and molesting her. He was given 10 years' probation in that case and never charged in the other attacks.

Moore said Brodie falsely confessed to the abduction and sexual assault in exchange for a five-year sentence. She said his original defense attorney wasn't told about the fingerprint match before Brodie accepted the plea.

Brodie has already served the five-year sentence. But he is currently serving time for failing to register as a sex offender in Lamar County. It is his third conviction, Moore said, for "stubbornly refusing to register for a crime he didn't commit."

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/092410dnmetexonerate.262e70b.html

Fingerprint could prove innocence for deaf inmate

By JEFF CARLTON Associated Press Writer

© 2010 The Associated Press
Sept. 23, 2010, 5:46PM

DALLAS — A deaf man convicted of sexual assault of a child — even though the fingerprint of a convicted child rapist was found at the crime scene — could walk free after a court hearing next week, his attorney said Thursday.

Stephen Brodie, who has spent 10 years behind bars, is expected to have his guilty verdict set aside at a hearing Monday. The Dallas County district attorney's office confirmed it is supporting Brodie's claim of innocence in the 1990 sexual assault of a 5-year-old girl in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas.

Police in Richardson learned that a fingerprint at the crime scene matched a man who pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl but continued to insist they'd arrested the right man. That same convicted sex offender also was the chief suspect in about a dozen similar sexual assaults of young girls terrorizing the Dallas area in the early 1990s, according to Dallas police.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7215232.html

Unbelievable. The real offender has served no jail time for his crimes while Brodie has spent 10 years behind bars.

With 20-year cloud of guilt lifted, Dallas County's latest exoneree is just grateful to be free

September 29, 2010
JENNIFER EMILY
The Dallas Morning News



Stephen Matthew Brodie walked out of the Dallas County Jail a free man Tuesday, nearly 20 years after first declaring his innocence and 24 hours after a judge finally agreed with him.

State District Judge Lena Levario ruled Monday that Brodie, 39, had been wrongly convicted of the 1990 abduction and sexual assault of a 5-year-old Richardson girl. But he had to spend an extra day behind bars because of paperwork between the Texas prison system and Dallas and Lamar counties.

"I was not worrying about it," a smiling Brodie, who is deaf, said through an American Sign Language interpreter. He said he was just happy to be free.

Brodie thanked his father, J. Steve Brodie, who wrote letters to 42 groups and agencies around the country trying to get him freed. He also thanked the Dallas County district attorney's office, which reinvestigated the case and agreed he was not guilty.

Read more: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-brodiefree_29met.ART.State.Edition1.33b4007.html

Wow, unbelievable!