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Two weeks after Thomas McGowan became the 17th Dallas County prisoner released following DNA testing, 55-year-old James Lee Woodard becomes the 18th. On July 17, 1981, Woodard was sentenced to life in prison for the sexual assault and strangulation of a woman found near the Trinity River on New Year’s Eve 1980. If he is indeed released tomorrow, as expected, Woodard will “be the longest-serving wrongly convicted man in the nation to be exonerated by DNA testing,” according to the Associated Press. Unfair Park has left messages for the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office and the Innocence Project of Texas; we will update shortly. –Robert Wilonsky
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