Wisconsin students working to free Texas convict
MADISON, Wisconsin (AP) -- Hours of work by University of Wisconsin-Madison law students and professors may soon pay off for a Texas man who has spent the past decade serving life in prison for murder.
The Wisconsin Innocence Project successfully fought for DNA testing that could set Christopher Ochoa free and is now awaiting word from the Texas district attorney handling the case on what will happen next.
Ochoa, 33, and another man were convicted for the 1988 rape and murder of Nancy DePriest, 20, a Pizza Hut worker in Austin, Texas. Both men were sentenced to life prison terms.
Preliminary DNA tests showed Ochoa was not linked to the crime, said John Pray, co-director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. The Capital Times reported the preliminary test results this week.
The project is a two-semester course for second- and third-year law students.
Pray said the Travis County district attorney's office did the DNA testing after the project began investigating Ochoa's case.
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle did not immediately return a telephone message Friday from The Associated Press.
Assistant District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg told The Capital Times, "The only thing we're saying right now is that we are looking at the case."
Keith Findley, the project's other co-director, said the district attorney's office is looking into reopening Ochoa's case.
Wendy Seffrood, a third-year law student, sent letters to the district attorney, crime labs, hospitals and anyone else who may have handled evidence, urging them to preserve it for DNA testing.
"The technology is vastly improved over where we were ... at the time the crime was committed," Seffrood said.
Pray said some district attorney's offices and crime labs keep evidence for a long period while others immediately destroy it.
"Mr. Ochoa is a lucky man because the DA didn't throw away the evidence," Pray said.
Ochoa confessed to the crime, but Pray said he probably did so because he faced the death penalty.
Students Cory Tennison and Brian VanDenzen were assigned to Ochoa's case at the start of the fall semester.
"We've just been corresponding with Chris and updating him with what's going on," Tennison said. "He's still a little cautious. ... I think that he's just really looking forward to being a free man again."
Tennison said they are looking into a report that another Texas inmate may have confessed to the murder in a 1996 letter to authorities.
Findley said if Ochoa is set free, it would be the first case the project has resolved. It has received hundreds of requests from inmates and family members requesting its services.
Participants screen the letters and have worked on only 40 to 50 cases since the project started in September 1998, he said.
"They have to be pretty compelling for us to look at them," Pray said.
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