A 76-year-old prisoner walked out of jail, a free man for the first time in 41 years, after a judge dismissed the conviction against him. Robert Carroll Coney, convicted of a 1962 robbery, exhibited a surprising lack of bitterness as he left Angelina County Jail with his wife on Tuesday. "I'm going to try to pick up the pieces," Coney told the Lufkin Daily News in Wednesday's editions. "If I was angry, what could I do about it?" The magnitude of the injustice done to Robert Carroll Coney for more than four decades -- a life prison sentence after his jailers tortured a confession out of him -- is immeasurable. We cannot imagine the horror of knowing you are in prison for a crime you did not commit, and worse, believing that judges, lawyers and others in the justice system don't care. Coney, now 76, was released from jail this week, after state District Judge David Wilson dismissed a charge stemming from a 1962 robbery in Lufkin. The only apparent evidence against Coney was his confession. However, according to Coney and Wilson, who reviewed the limited court record of the case, Coney admitted to the crime only after two deputies to then-Sheriff Leon Jones, in Jones' presence, slammed his hand in a metal door frame. They also hurled racist epithets at him, Coney said, and threatened to shoot him if he did not confess. [more
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