Texas Man Free With DNA Help

A man who spent nearly 13 years in prison on a rape conviction has been freed following new DNA testing.

“I always believed this day was going to happen,” Mark Webb, 39, said Friday as he left prison. He said he had no ill feelings toward prosecutors, the jury or the woman who accused him.

Webb was released on a $1,000 personal recognizance bond. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals still must confirm that the new DNA tests exonerate Webb, but prosecutor Alan Levy said he expects that will happen.

When Webb’s case went to trial in 1987, the semen and blood testing indicated he could not be excluded as a match. Levy said new DNA testing is more precise.

“Our primary interest is in making sure the findings are accurate,” Levy said in Saturday’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “When they’re not, that means the system failed.”

Levy said the victim in Webb’s case had been brutally assaulted and had seen her attacker.

Webb’s attorney Scott Brown said Webb’s extensive arrest record was probably the reason he became a suspect.

He was sentenced to 30 years on the rape conviction and was paroled in 1997 but was returned to prison two years later on a parole violation.

Webb requested the testing under a Texas law signed in April that allows inmates already convicted of a crime to ask a trial court for DNA testing. In its first six months, 190 inmates in the state’s three largest counties requested testing.