<i>Radio Atlantic</i>: How Innocence Becomes Irrelevant
The story of Benjamine Spencer shows a legal system that prefers naming someone guilty over figuring out who really is.
After Rick Magnis, a Texas judge, reviewed the evidence in Benjamine Spencer’s case, he recommended a new trial for Spencer “on the grounds of actual innocence.” But Texas’s highest criminal court took the rare step of rejecting the judge’s ruling. Why? Because Spencer did not meet the state’s “Herculean” standard of unassailable proof, such as DNA, that would
