WRONGLY IMPRISONED

Two years ago, I investigated and prosecuted corrupt police officers
Quentis Roper and Daniel Maples for falsely arresting and stealing from
Dallas citizens. I was recently asked by a reporter if I thought there were
citizens still wrongly imprisoned by the actions of these two officers and
had the audacity to say I thought so. Regrettably, and unbeknownst to me at
the time, First Assistant Mike Carnes turned heads by voicing his own
opinion that it wasn't the job of Dallas County District Attorney Bill
Hill's office to worry about wrongly imprisoned citizens ("False drug
convictions may linger," Sept. 8). Mr. Carnes and Mr. Hill, after receiving
a frank exchange of views from Dallas citizenry, have now decided it is
unquestionably the DA's duty to worry about just such issues.

And in fact, now that they're thinking about it, they remember delegating
this duty to (eeney meeny miney mo) . . . Birdsall ("DA seeks justice," by
Michael P. Carnes, Letters, Sept. 20). Yeah, it was Birdsall. This is a
brilliant strategy on their part: by painting me as an incompetent or
worse, they lessen the public impact of my concerns and their own poorly
chosen words. The only problem with this is none of it's true. I was never
asked to review any cases filed by these corrupt officers.

I probably need to hold a finger up to the political winds before I answer
certain questions to certain reporters on certain topics in the future, but
I will not be the scapegoat for these gentlemen.

Pending cases were evaluated and dismissed by drug section chief Gregg
Long, not me. I'm unclear as to when Mr. Hill and Mr. Carnes thought I was
doing all this reviewing since they had transferred me to the Civil
Division four months before the Roper trial and brought me back for the
trial only.

After Officer Roper's conviction, I realized that Gregg Long had missed a
dismissal against one of my testifying witnesses, a Roper victim, since he
had been convicted before Mr. Long had started his review. I figured out
how to get the citizen released from prison and then I left, never to return.

Since I'm now mad . . . fast forward to the present day "fake drug"
scandal. If Mr. Hill is as interested in justice as he now claims, what
about Jaime Chavez? Jaime is no drug dealer, but had the bad luck to be
with two people who were. When all three got arrested, the two real drug
dealers had the money to bond out, did so and fled. And yet, irony of
ironies, their cases were among those Mr. Hill reviewed and dismissed.

Meanwhile Jaime, who couldn't bond out, was dragged to trial, convicted and
sentenced to 15 years in prison by a jury with no inkling as to the
credibility problems of now-disgraced informant Enrique Alonzo. And where
is Mr. Hill on this? Instead of getting Jaime out of prison, he tells his
lawyer Juan Sanchez to appeal if he doesn't like it.

Clark Birdsall, former chief, Public Integrity Division, Dallas County
District Attorney's Office, Dallas