HOUSTON – An innocent man who spent 27 years in prison will have to spend one more night behind bars.
The Harris County District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday announced that Michael Green, 44, was not a part of the aggravated assault he was convicted of in 1983.
He was initially expected to be released on Thursday, but officials said he would have to stay in jail until Friday instead.
Green’s case stretches back to April of 1983, when four men abducted a woman at a pay telephone in the Greenspoint area. The men drove her to a remote location, where three of them sexually assaulted her, threw her out of the car and drove away. A fourth man in the car refused to take part in the assault.
Later, police chased a stolen car matching the description of the vehicle. The four occupants in the vehicle abandoned the car and fled. During a search, officers detained Green, who was walking in the area. While the victim could not originally identify Green in person when he was detained, she later identified him in a photo array as one of the three men who assaulted her. Green was the only one convicted in the case.
Green maintained his innocence through the whole appeal process and, after the Post Conviction Review section was formed, Green’s claims were found to warrant a review. The DA’s review team located the only remaining evidence in the case – clothing worn by the victim during the offense – and had it subjected to DNA testing.
After a lengthy investigation in which the review team conducted numerous interviews with witnesses and new suspects, authorities identified all four men suspected of committing the crime. However, because the statute of limitations had elapsed, none of them could be prosecuted. Green has been excluded as one of the three rapists.
"The evidence in this case had been sitting in the District Clerk’s Office for 27 years, and no one had taken the initiative to do anything with it in the past," said Assistant DA Jim Leitner. "The difference now is that you’ve got the Post Conviction Review Section looking into it—and that made all the difference in the case of Mr. Green."
The final ruling on Green’s innocence will be made by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Green, who was 18 at the time of the conviction, is believed to have served the longest prison sentence of any Texas inmate before potential exoneration.
This is the second time within a week that the work of the Post Conviction Review Section, which was created by District Attorney Patricia Lykos to review credible claims of innocence, has led to the release of an inmate after reviewing evidence. Allen Wayne Porter was freed on July 23 after the District Attorney’s Office uncovered evidence of his innocence. Porter, 39, had spent 19 years in prison.
