Dallas County prosecutor who withheld evidence disbarred after two 2 men cleared of murder – The Dallas Morning News

This story was updated at 1:20 p.m. with comments from Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot.

A former Dallas County prosecutor quietly surrendered his law license last month after the State Bar of Texas said he withheld evidence that led to the wrongful convictions of two men in the slaying of a South Dallas pastor.

The State Bar concluded that Richard E. Rick Jackson failed to inform Dennis Allen and Stanley Mozees defense attorneys about evidence that could have cleared them at their 2000 capital murder trials. As a result, the courts say, Allen and Mozee wrongfully spent 14 years in prison for the murder of Rev. Jesse Borns Jr.

This case is not about someone disbarred for making a mistake or a prosecutor who accidentally or even sloppily failed to turn over favorable evidence, said Nina Morrison, a lawyer with the Innocence Project in New York, who worked to clear Allen and Mozee.

This is someone who repeatedly and intentionally hid favorable evidence from two defendants who were on trial for their lives.

Texas judges found Jackson withheld several pieces of evidence that could have helped Allen and Mozee. The men were freed from prison in 2014 and declared actually innocent in 2019 after DNA testing helped clear them.

Secret deal negotiations with jailhouse informants, witness descriptions that didnt match Allen and Mozee and false information that witnesses positively identified the men were among the evidence Jackson kept from defense lawyers, judges who reviewed the cases found.

The Innocence Project in New York and the Innocence Project of Texas filed a 196-page grievance with the State Bar in 2018 against Jackson.

Jackson has long maintained that he handed over the evidence to the defense and still believes Allen and Mozee are guilty, said Jacksons lawyer Bob Hinton.

He wasnt at all guilty of any of the things he was charged with in that stupid grievance complaint, Hinton said. If he had the financial wherewithal and he fought it, we would win it. Theres no question in my mind.

Hinton said that against his advice, Jackson chose not to spend his retirement savings fighting the accusation at a disciplinary hearing where he faced losing his law license.

The state bar told the Texas Supreme Court, which oversees all attorneys practicing law, that Jacksons resignation is in the best interest of the public and of the profession.

Jackson joins a short list of only four prosecutors nationwide disbarred for egregious misconduct in wrongful convictions, according to the Innocence Project.Three of the four prosecutors are from Texas. Ken Anderson was jailed five days for withholding a bandana that DNA testing later led to Michael Mortons exoneration in the killing of his wife in Williamson County. Charles Sebesta concealed that the actual killer in the slaying of six family members repeatedly denied that Anthony Graves was an accomplice until he struck a deal with the prosecution and testified against Graves in Burleson County. Anderson and Sebesta were the elected district attorneys in their counties. The other former prosecutor, Kenneth Peasley, was a deputy county attorney in Tucson, Arizona when he allowed a detective to lie on the stand in two capital murder trials.

Jackson retired from practicing law in 2013 after he was fired from the Denton County district attorneys office. While testifying in proceedings for Allen and Mozees cases, Jackson said he was terminated because he wanted to be tougher on crimes than his boss. The district attorneys office did not respond to requests for comment.

Jackson was also among a slew of prosecutors who were not invited to remain in the Dallas County district attorneys office after former DA Craig Watkins won the 2006 election. Jackson, who had spent 17 years as a Dallas County prosecutor, sued Watkins in federal court, claiming his termination was race-based. Jackson is white and Watkins is Black. A judge tossed the suit.

Hinton said Jackson didnt want to comment. He is angry over what he considers false accusations against him and was physically ill in Hintons office when he decided to surrender his law license, Hinton said. The career prosecutor now spends summers in Alaska where he drives tour buses that work with cruise ships, Hinton said.

Jacksons decision is just as good as an admission of guilt to me, said Allen, now 57.

If youre actually innocent, why would you not fight for that? Allen said. His lawyers -- what would you expect them to say?

Mozee, now 62, said he is relieved Jackson wont practice law again and feels the punishment is fair.

Thats a harsh accountability because he took some harsh tactics to convict me, Mozee said.

Allen, who says he lives a simple life in DeSoto, has spent the last few years studying the Bible more and drawing closer to God, he said. His Christianity helped him cope with the deaths of his parents last year, just seven months apart. His mother passed first from pneumonia and his father of COVID-19.

Allen participates in speaking engagements with both Innocence Project organizations and recently championed wrongful conviction reform bills that are being debated in the Texas legislature.

Mozee lives with his wife in Mesquite and spends much of his time volunteering in South Dallas.

Mozee, who is legally blind, does work cleaning up neighborhoods with former Councilwoman Diane Ragsdales nonprofit Innercity Community Development Corporation. This year, he published a book of African American folklore stories that he mostly wrote while in prison.

On April 6, 1999, Borns was stabbed 47 times and left for dead in his leather and woodworking store on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The real killer has not been caught.

Just two years before, Borns himself was released from prison on parole for fatally shooting a woman outside his church where he said theft and vandalism led him to keep a gun there. Borns returned to his South Dallas neighborhood and tried to minister to the homeless and downtrodden. Borns paid Mozee to clean his shop.

Allen and Mozee werent arrested until July 1999. Two other men were investigated for the crime before detectives focused on Allen and Mozee.

There were no eyewitnesses to the killing and forensic evidence at the time didnt lead to a suspect, according to court records. A store clerk who saw two people using Borns credit cards hours after the murder was called to testify. But after seeing Allen in court, the clerk testified he wasnt one of the people. Prosecutors relied on testimony from jailhouse informants and an alleged confession that a detective wrote and Mozee signed.

Allen and Mozee were sentenced to life in prison. New DNA tests conducted on evidence while the men were behind bars found that DNA that didnt match either man or Borns.

The Dallas County district attorneys office under Watkins re-opened the file and found evidence that defense lawyers said theyd never received, such as accounts from witnesses who saw two men argue with Borns outside the store the evening he was killed. Witnesses said one man was distinctly taller than the other and one had a noticeable scar across the side of his neck. Allen and Mozee are about the same height, about 6 feet, and neither had a scar.

The file also included previously undisclosed letters from people in jail who agreed to testify against Allen in exchange for favors in their cases.

Watkins and his three successors Susan Hawk, Faith Johnson and current District Attorney John Creuzot two Democrats and two Republicans supported the actual innocence claims for Allen and Mozee.

In March 2017, state District Judge Everett Young ruled the mens convictions should be vacated because Jackson withheld evidence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas, agreed in January 2018.

Creuzot, who took office in 2019, said he extended a personal apology to Allen and Mozee and asks their forgiveness for what this office did many years ago. He said he is praying for Borns family.

Its disappointing that a member of the Texas bar and a former employee of this office has been found to have violated his oath to his profession and to the constitutions of the United States and Texas to the extent that he deprived two innocent people of their freedom, Creuzot said.

The exonerees said they dont harbor ill will for Jackson.

I didnt like what he did, of course. But I did not allow Rick Jacksons wrongs to dictate and control and maneuver me, Allen said. God holds us accountable for what we do and how we act, so if you allow others to draw you into their wrongdoings or their miseries, then hell hold you accountable.

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Dallas County prosecutor who withheld evidence disbarred after two 2 men cleared of murder - The Dallas Morning News