MADISON, Wis. â?? How could you do it?
The question dogs Christopher Ochoa. It always will.
In 1988, Mr. Ochoa, then a naive 22-year-old, confessed to a rape and murder he didn’t commit, and accused an innocent friend, Richard Danziger, of the same crime to avoid the death penalty.
The two men were sentenced to life in prison. Twelve years later, they were exonerated by DNA evidence and were among the first of a parade of people who have made Texas the national leader in acknowledging wrongful convictions. Their shocking tale still reverberates around the state Capitol, where legislators keep passing laws to fix flaws that the case revealed in the criminal justice system.