Using Software to Prevent Wrongful Convictions

By Ashish Patel, CEO and Founder of Simpat Tech

Throughout my career in business and development, I’ve seen firsthand the return a software investment can generate. I’ve witnessed automated DevOps save a company from costly, embarrassing, customer-facing errors, and I’ve seen how more efficient software can be used to help small teams drive big wins.

But it wasn’t until my company, Simpat Tech, had the chance to work with the Texas Conference of Urban Counties on building a Defense portal that I truly understood the impact software can have - thanks to a man named Michael Morton.

Michael Morton’s Story

In August 1986, in the early morning hours, Michael Morton left his home in Williamson County, Texas, and went to work at the grocery store he managed. Later that day, his wife Christine was discovered bludgeoned to death in their bed. Even though neighbors reported a suspicious van on the street near the Morton’s home and found a bloody bandana nearby, police arrested Morton and charged him with murder.

Throughout his trial, Morton maintained his innocence. His young son, who was home at the time of the murder, also told police it was not his father who had committed the crime. During his trial, Morton’s defense team asked that evidence be handed over to them. Yet, unknown to them or the judge, the prosecutor withheld the bloody bandana as well as other evidence that had been gathered. In 1987, Morton was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to life in prison.

Advances in DNA Testing and the Michael Morton Act

Many years later, a court granted permission for DNA testing to be done on the bloody bandana found near the crime scene, which identified Christine Morton’s DNA as well as the DNA of an unidentified male.

When the male DNA was run through the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) databank, it matched DNA on file for another man, Mark Norwood. In 2011, Morton was exonerated, and in 2013, Norwood was convicted of Christine Morton’s murder, along with another similar murder. Morton spent nearly 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit; after his exoneration, his former prosecutor, Ken Anderson, was convicted of criminal contempt and tampering with evidence.

On March 16, 2013, Texas Governor Rick Perry signed the Michael Morton Act into law, which now requires prosecutors to open their files to defendants and to keep records of the evidence they disclose - regardless of whether the material is evidence to guilt or punishment. If the Act had been in practice in 1986, Morton’s defense team could have argued that the bloody bandana and other evidence pointed to another assailant.

With that evidence, Michael Morton might not have been wrongly convicted.

Facilitating Digital Evidence Capture

While the Michael Morton Act serves to prevent wrongful convictions and evidence coverups, challenges associated with digital evidence gathering at the time made the discovery process very cumbersome and time-consuming. Evidence from in-car cameras, body cameras, and phones had to be gathered, burned to discs, and then physically picked up by legal teams. Adding in the vastness of the state of Texas and the size of jurisdictions for some prosecutors’ offices made it very difficult for many to comply with the new Act.

To help facilitate smoother digital evidence capture, Simpat Tech partnered with the Texas Conference of Urban Counties to build a Defense portal within a larger software suite we built that included a law enforcement portal and a prosecutor case management system. This suite of justice products now enables law enforcement offices to file an incident with any appropriate digital evidence, submit the incident to the prosecutor’s office, and allow digital evidence to become automatically or manually discoverable to the defendant’s defense attorney through the Defense portal.

According to one user, “It used to take up to 3 weeks to provide in-car video to defense attorneys, but now it takes minutes to a day.”

The Impact of Software Development

Custom software doesn’t have to have a substantive impact on the justice process to have an impact or to represent a worthwhile investment. But it’s also true that, of all the projects the Simpat team has worked on, I’m most proud of the Defense software we created. Going forward, this software ensures defense attorneys have access to the same evidence as prosecutors, potentially preventing future scenarios like Michael Morton’s wrongful conviction.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to have worked on the project, and I continue to look forward to new opportunities to change the world through software development.