| First Name | Richard |
| Last Name | Danziger |
| Year of Conviction | 1990 |
| Year of Exoneration | 2002 |
| Testing inculpated culprit | Non-Cold Hit |
| State of Conviction | Texas |
| Trial, Bench Trial, or Guilty Plea | Trial |
| Type of Crime | Rape |
| Death Sentence | No |
| Life / LWOP sentence | Life |
| Gender of Exoneree | Male |
| Race of exoneree | White |
| Juvenile | No |
| Type of Innocence Defense |
|
| Description / Quotes from Testimony Concerning Defense | ● Defendant was the only witness in support of the alibi. |
| Did the defendant testify at trial? | Yes |
| Quotes from Exoneree Testimony | “Q: Had you ever met [the victim]? A: No. That’s a public fact. You can go through all my records or whatever. I never even met the girl.” |
| Types of evidence at trial |
|
| Type of Forensic Evidence |
|
| Types of Flawed Forensics |
|
| Reason why invalid | (1) Masking |
| Brief Quote / Description of Testimony | Victim is PGM 1+1+, Danziger is PGM 1+2+. A small quantity of semen and the type PGM 1+ was identified which was consistent with the victim and also with Danziger. When asked “Could any other type O secretor with a 1+ PGM partial subtype have been that donor?” the analyst answered, “Yes.” However, because the 1+ detected could have solely originated from the victim, the donor could have been any type. See Part II.A.1 for a description of the problem of masking and non-quantification and discussion of similar cases. The analyst testified that questioned hairs were “consistent” with the defendant. |
| Jailhouse informant, Co-defendant, Incentivized Witness | CD |
| Examples of Non-Public or Corroborated Facts and Inconsistencies | ● Non-public facts included in co-defendant Chris Ochoa’s false confession – see false confession Appendix. |
| Quotes from testimony #3 | Prosecutor argued, “look at the explicit details of the crime. I don’t know if you caught some of these things. When Chris was talking about how they bound and gagged [the victim], when they took her to the arcade area, how her shirt was taken from her legs where it had been used as ligament and thrown off on Richard. Remember where her shirt was found? Right in that doorway by the arcade. And remember they said that she was carried into the bathroom after she had been shot in the head, and her tie that had been used to bound her up was taken off by Richard so he could perform oral sex on her dying body. Where was the tie found? In the bathroom. Now, are you to believe the police sat and coached him on all those details so once again we could convict an innocent man. Is that what you are to believe? That’s what the defense is asserting.” |
| Highest level reached | NR |
| Claims Raised During All Appeals and Postconviction |
|
| Harmless Error Rulings |
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| Citations to judicial opinions | Danziger v. State, No. 3‐90‐086‐CR (Tex. App. 3 Dist. Austin 1991) |