Richard “Rick” E. Jackson is just the fourth lawyer in the country to lose a law license after egregious misconduct that led to a wrongful conviction.
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By Krista M. Torralva
This story was updated at 1:20 p.m. with comments from Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot.
A former Dallas County prosecutor quietly surrendered his law license last month after the State Bar of Texas said he withheld evidence that led to the wrongful convictions of two men in the slaying of a South Dallas pastor.
The State Bar concluded that Richard E. “Rick” Jackson failed to inform Dennis Allen and Stanley Mozee’s defense attorneys about evidence that could have cleared them at their 2000 capital murder trials. As a result, the courts say, Allen and Mozee wrongfully spent 14 years in prison for the murder of Rev. Jesse Borns Jr.
“This case is not about someone disbarred for making a mistake or a prosecutor who accidentally or even sloppily failed to turn over favorable evidence,” said Nina Morrison, a lawyer with the Innocence Project in New York, who worked to clear Allen and Mozee.
“This is someone who repeatedly and intentionally hid favorable evidence from two defendants who were on trial for their lives.”
Texas judges found Jackson withheld several pieces of evidence that
could have helped Allen and Mozee. The men were freed from prison in
2014 and declared actually innocent in 2019 after DNA testing helped
clear them. (Click to continue reading)
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