http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2016-09-30/norwood-found-guilty/
So, back in the 1980s the homicide of Debra Baker took place in Austin. She was a mother of two living in North Austin at the time she was bludgeoned to death in her bed. For years her husband (who she had separated from) was behind bars for her murder, but recently at his latest appeals trial they exonerated him due to the fact they found DNA evidence connecting another man to her murder. Mark Norwood was tried and convinced of her murder and the legal ordeal ended just recently. Like less than a week ago.
Mark Norwood entered through the back door, beat her to death, and stole her VCR. Back in 1986 DNA wasn't testable the way it is today. So, when they re-ran evidence during the appeal they discovered Norwood's DNA on the handle of the blood soaked wooden bat he used to beat Baker with. It was found that Norwood could have installed the carpeting in Baker's residence and come back to rob her, but apt records weren't kept so it is all speculation.
I feel like this is relevant because, in general, True Crime is a pretty well enjoyed topic in terms of media. People like crime shows like there's no tomorrow! It's always just interesting to see real life, real time, CLOSE BY occurrences of some of that stuff that we take as fictitious regularly. Maybe that's a little weird. I just found it interesting to see how that trial and case took place across such a long time span, whereas on those shows the crimes seem open and shut so quickly. Seeing how long a process of the law actually takes in a court case is valuable knowledge.
Also, wrongful convictions for old crimes is insanely common. At my highschool they offered a forensic science course as senior science and therefore I took it. At the start of the semester we started doing a lot of work involving The Innocence Project. The group compiles cases in which an offender was wrongfully convicted due to lack of DNA evidence obtainable when the cases were committed. Many of the cases are pre-90s when we really had no way to analyze DNA. The case of Debra Baker now falls into the giant pile of other cases involving wrongful convictions. Her husband is just lucky that he didn't get sentenced to death and literally killed because of a wrongful conviction. More than 1,000 wrongfully convicted death sentences have been fully carried out in the United States. There are at least 8 of which happened in Texas in the 1980s. That's a lot of people sentenced and killed to later have been found not guilty of the crimes they died for.
