Texas prosecutor Ken Anderson jailed for convicting innocent man

Accepts no blame: District Judge Ken Anderson won prosecutor of the year for getting a conviction in the case of Michael Morton

 

A top prosecutor has been accused of hiding evidence in a murder case which led to the wrong man being jailed for 25 years and allowed the real killer to walk free and murder again.
Ken Anderson won prosecutor of the year for getting a conviction in the case of Michael Morton, from Texas, who was accused of bludgeoning his wife to death in 1986 while their three-year-old son sat in another room in their home.
Morton always denied he had anything to do with his wife Christine's death and 25 years later, DNA evidence linked another man to the crime.

 

Trial: Ken Anderson won prosecutor of the year for getting a conviction in the case of Michael Morton, center, from Texas, who was accused of bludgeoning his wife to death in 1986

 

Innocent: Michael Morton was released on DNA evidence 25 years after being wrongfully convicted of the murder of his wife

 

 

Michael Morton with his wife Christine and son Eric: Christine's grandmother told police at the time that Eric said a 'monster with a big mustache' killed his mom, 'not daddy'

 

Evidence which was said to be hidden from the defense team has lead to a criminal inquiry against Anderson. Mr Morton was jailed for life in 1987 after being convicted of murder, despite the fact no evidence linked him directly to the crime and he had no criminal record.
His wife was found dead at their home in Williamson County, Texas, having been beaten with a blunt wooden object which was never found. His lawyers, who battled tirelessly for years to prove his innocence, found that prosecutors had a statement from both his son - who witnessed the brutal murder - and a neighbor, who saw a suspicious man in the area. Speaking to CBS' 60 Minutes about what it was like to walk free, Mr Morton said: 'It was so alien at first. It wasn't quite real. We stepped out of the courtroom and it was a beautiful sunny day. 
'The sun felt so good on my face, on my skin. I can just feel like I was just drinking in the sunshine. Free sun feels different, I know it sounds stupid, but it does.'

 

 

Taste of freedom: The moment Michael Morton walked free from court after 25 years of wrongful imprisonment with his lawyer John Raley of the Innocence Project

 

Confinement: The cell Michael Morton had to spend 25 years of his life would not even enable him to fully stretch out, he said prison 'eats at you like rust'

 

Real killer?: When the defense was eventually able to DNA test a bloody bandana found at the scene, the blood of Christine Morton and the DNA of known felon Mark Alan Norwood, pictured, was present

Ken Anderson agreed to a plea deal that will see him serve 10 days in jail, perform 500 hours of community service and be disbarred. He was charged with tampering with evidence in the 1987 murder trial of Michael Morton. Anderson, also a former state judge, agreed a deal on Friday in the same Texas courthouse in which he used to preside.

He faced criminal charges and a civil lawsuit for allegedly withholding key evidence and making false statements to the court during Morton's trial in the beating death of his wife, Christine. Lawyers for Morton said Anderson withheld a transcript of a police interview with Morton's mother-in-law and reports from neighbours saying they had seen a man in a green van parked in front of the Morton home several times before the crime, according to the Texas Tribune.

"I don't know if satisfying is the right word," Morton said following Anderson's court appearance on Friday.
"When it began, I was asked what I wanted. I said, 'The only thing that I want, as a baseline, is for Ken Anderson to be off the bench and no longer practice law,'" Morton told the Texas Tribune. "Both of those things have happened and more."

Anderson reportedly apologized to Morton for "failures in the system" but said he did not believe there was any misconduct, according to media reports.
"In a case like this,  it's hard to say what meets the ends of justice and what doesn't," presiding District Judge Kelly Moore said on Friday.
"There's no way that anything we can do today will resolve the tragedy that occurred".