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Chris Morton Case Facts

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On August 8th, 1986, Michael’s birthday, Chris Morton was found bludgeoned in her bed. Chris was 31 years old and had fallen asleep after putting their son Eric to bed. Michael was expecting intercourse with Chris, but she went to bed. Michael stated that his wife woke him up in the middle of the night and told him they could tomorrow. The next morning Michael continued with his normal routine and went to work. As Michael came home from work, he saw multiple flashing cop cars surrounding his house. Chris Morton’s body was removed from the house for further investigation. Shortly after receiving the autopsy results, Michael Morton was convicted. He is only one of the many who are wrongfully convicted every day. It’s vital all evidence is acknowledged to eliminate wrongful convictions. When the autopsy results came back, the doctors reported eight blows to the head. After examining the stomach, they determined the time of death was 1:15 AM. This led them to believe Michael was guilty because he had said he was home all night. If her death was at 1:15 AM, then why didn’t Michael notice the body in the morning? Michael stated, “Tell the truth and you have nothing to fear …show more content…

Raley also came across a crucial piece of evidence which wasn’t examined during his trial, a bandana which as found behind the house near the woods. The blood on the bandana was Chris’s blood and possibly another person’s. For the first time in years, Michael had a chance to get out. If the Innocence Project could just figure out who else’s blood was on the bandana. The DNA results from the bandana came back, Mark Alan Norwood’s blood was intermixed with Chris’s blood. Mark Norwood lived within blocks of a second murder almost identical to Chris’s, but no one was convicted. Mark Norwood began to look suspicious due to moving around a lot from house to

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Even when Michael’s new defense team, through the innocence project, found a crime that was eerily similar to the method of murder and subsequent events to the one that Michael was convicted of, the new prosecutor in Williamson County fought hard to keep DNA testing from taking place, even stating that they objected to the testing now because the defense hadn’t requested it before (Morton, 2014). There was further evidence of ineffectiveness in that the coroner who’d changed his estimated time of death between the autopsy and trial, had come under scrutiny for his findings in this case, as well as several others, with claims of gross errors “including one case where he came to the conclusion that a man who’d been stabbed in the back had committed suicide” (Morton, 2014). This was only one of the many injustices that were committed against Michael Morton throughout his trial. In August of 2006, the defense was finally granted permission to perform DNA testing on the items that had been taken from his wife’s body (Morton, 2014). Although this testing did not reveal any information about the guilty party, it did at least give Michael the knowledge that Chris was not sexually violated before or after her death (Morton,

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