Innocent Texan released after almost 20 years in prison

Sep 29, 2010, 19:07 GMT

Washington - A man who spent almost 20 years in a Texas prison for a wrongful conviction of having kidnapped and raped a 5-year-old girl has been released, local media reported Wednesday.

Stephen Matthew Brodie, 39, who is deaf, left a Dallas jail Tuesday a free man, after a new investigation showed he was innocent.

Brodie had to wait an extra day for the release, until the relevant paperwork was completed.

'I was not worrying about it,' the Dallas Morning News quoted him as saying through a sign language interpreter.

In 1993, Brodie pleaded guilty to having abducted and raped the girl three years earlier. However, his plea came after 18 hours of interrogation over eight days, mostly without a sign language interpreter, the newspaper reported.

Earlier, investigators had become aware of Brodie because he had broken into a vending machine near the girl's home.

Brodie's father had never doubted his son's innocence and wrote scores of letters to civil rights groups and authorities to demand his release. Eventually, the conviction integrity unit at the Dallas County District took on the case and found many things wrong with it.

According to the newspaper, Brodie is the third man in Dallas County cleared without DNA evidence, and the second to have previously pleaded guilty to the crime. The county has reportedly recorded 20 DNA exonerations since 2001, more than any other county in the United States.