OK CURE

 Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants

OK CURE is the Oklahoma Chapter of National CURE 

— errant noun 

C.U.R.E.'s Outreach Activities

• Providing errants and their families with information about rehabilative programs.

• Promoting the creation of more rehabilitative programs.

• Convincing errants that change can be brought about more effectively through the exercise of their constitutional rights.

$49 billion dollars in state and federal funds are spent each year on corrections. That number is expected to grow to nearly $75 billion dollars by the year 2011.

THE HUMAN COST OF INCARCERATIONS ARE IMMEASUREABLE:

• 1 in 100 Americans are in prison
• 1.7 million children has a parent in prison
• 1 in 43 in the US
• The number of incarcerated parents has increased by 79%
• The number of incarcerated mothers has increased by 122%
• Children of incarcerated parents are 6 times more likely to be incarcerated
• Aging prisoners, over 55, has increased by more than 33%
• Profits from privatized prisons continue to grow

We can all do a better job. This is America!

Please consider getting involved. This is our country, these are our children, our mothers, our fathers. We cry for leadership - will you lead?

The effort of one ......

OKLAHOMA IS #1 IN THE NATION FOR INCARCERATING WOMEN

IT HAPPENS

Dallas man freed by DNA testing after 27 years in prison

April 29, 2008 11:43 AM EDT

DALLAS - A Dallas man who spent more than 27 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit was freed Tuesday, after being incarcerated longer than any other wrongfully convicted U.S. inmate cleared by DNA testing

James Lee Woodard stepped out of the courtroom and raised his arms to a throng of photographers. Supporters and other people gathered outside the court erupted in applause.

"No words can express what a tragic story yours is," state District Judge Mark Stoltz told Woodard at a brief hearing before his release.

Woodard, cleared of the 1980 murder of his girlfriend, became the 18th person in Dallas County to have his conviction cast aside. That's a figure unmatched by any county nationally, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that specializes in overturning wrongful convictions.

"I thank God for the existence of the Innocence project," Woodard, 55, told the court. "Without that, I wouldn't be here today. I would be wasting away in prison."

Overall, 31 people have been formally exonerated through DNA testing in Texas, also a national high. That does not include Woodard and at least three others whose exonerations will not become official until Gov. Rick Perry grants pardons or the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals formally accepts the ruling of lower courts that have already recommended exoneration.

Woodard was sentenced to life in prison in July 1981 for the murder of a 21-year-old Dallas woman found sexually assaulted and strangled near the banks of the Trinity River.

He was convicted primarily on the basis of testimony from two eyewitnesses, said Natalie Roetzel, the executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas. One has since recanted in an affidavit. As for the other, "we don't believe her testimony was accurate," Roetzel said.

Like nearly all the exonorees, Woodard has maintained his innocence throughout his time in prison. But after filing six writs with an appeals court, plus two requests for DNA testing, his pleas of innocence became so repetitive and routine that "the courthouse doors were eventually closed to him and he was labeled a writ abuser," Roetzel said.

"On the first day he was arrested, he told the world he was innocent ... and nobody listened," Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas, said during Tuesday's hearing.