Steven Phillips Was Wrongfully Convicted For 24 years, Ex-wife Wanted a Share Of Compensation.

Steven Phillips was granted parole in 2007 more than two decades after being imprisoned for a number of Texas sex crimes he didn't commit.

A year after he was released on parole, DNA testing proved his innocence, leading to his exoneration. Another man, who is accused of committing at least 16 different sexual crimes and related offenses while Phillips was in prison, was implicated in the DNA testing that cleared Phillips.

The Assault

At least 60 women in the Dallas area were approached by a man between April and May 1982. He threatened them with a gun and pressured them into performing various sex acts, such as rape, disrobing, and fondling.

The victims all described a man with piercing blue eyes wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt and a piece of cloth covering the lower half of his face. The incidents were all linked to the same man, according to the police.

It was only in one of the sexual assaults that the perpetrator's semen was collected. A woman from North Dallas was at home with her 2-year-old son in the afternoon of May 14, 1982. By removing her bedroom window, the man gained access to the apartment. He forced her to take off her clothes and have oral sex with him while brandishing a gun, telling her to put her son in another room. Before leaving the apartment, he performed a vaginal rape on her.

Investigation

The rape victim saw several sets of photos and recognized Phillips as her assailant. In both photo lineups and in-person lineups, a number of other victims of comparable crimes also recognized Phillips as the offender; however, before many of these victims made their identifications, police had released photos of Phillips to the media.

In Kansas City, similar crimes had happened the previous year. The victims of those attacks were shown photo lineups, one them picked Phillips and named him as the attacker. Victims in Dallas and Kansas City also recognized a man called Sidney Goodyear as the perpetrator. The defense attorneys were never given Sidney Goodyear identity, as required by law. Goodyear was the subject of an arrest warrant in the Dallas crime wave, but it was never executed for an unidentified reason.

The Trial

In August 1982, Phillips was first put on trial for breaking into the apartment of the rape victim. She once more identified Phillips in court as the hooded suspect with the unmistakable blue eyes who had broken into her apartment and sexually assaulted her.

Despite having green eyes and providing an explanation for where he was when the crime was committed, Phillips was found guilty of both burglary and rape. For these two convictions, he received a 30-year prison term. Phillips pleaded guilty to charges related to five additional incidents before a third trial could start, receiving an additional 10-year sentence in exchange. Phillips claimed he was innocent of these charges as well, but his first two trials resulted in convictions and lengthy prison terms, and he did not want to go through further proceedings that might mean decades longer in jail.

Appealing after conviction and being exonerated

After receiving a parole release in 1996, Phillips was detained once more in 1997 on suspicion of parole violation. Although the parole infraction did not result in a new conviction, it did cause him to be sent back to prison for the crimes from 1982.

In 2002, Phillips requested post-conviction DNA testing, but his requests were turned down. In 2006, The Innocence Project took on Phillips' case and asked for DNA testing on Phillips' behalf. The outcomes proved Phillips' innocence in the rape. The prosecutor's office conducted an investigation and came to the conclusion that Phillips was not guilty of any of the charges for which he had already served decades in jail. Following his conviction for similar crimes in 1998, Sidney Goodyear passed away in prison. It was discovered that the DNA from the Dallas crime scene and the DNA preserved from Goodyear's autopsy matched.

Before the DNA test results were made public, Phillips was paroled out in 2007. He was exonerated of all charges by the trial court in August 2008 based on those findings. His acquittal was confirmed by a writ of habeas corpus issued by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on October 1, 2008. Phillips had completed his 24-year sentence.

While Phillips was incarcerated for Sidney Alvin Goodyear's assaults in Dallas, Goodyear had already been found guilty of at least 16 additional sexual assaults and related offenses in a number of different states. In 2011, the state of Texas gave Phillips a lump sum payment of about $2 million and a $11,000 per month annuity.

His total compensation for the time he spent in prison is almost $6 million, and that doesn't include the health care and education benefits he is also entitled to.

Steven's ex-wife comes for his money

His ex-wife, Traci Tucker, argued that she was entitled to a portion of that money. The two were locked in a legal battle that her lawyers said was the first of its kind in the nation.

Tucker said that the money was for lost wages, but Phillips said in his appeal that it wasn't. And, he said, because he couldn't get paid until long after the divorce, the money he got shouldn't be split up according to state laws on community property.

Phillips said he was grateful for Tucker's help during his trials, but he said she rarely came to see him in prison. "It's crazy as hell to try to get money for the years I spent in jail," he said.

Tucker's lawyer, Matt Kita, said that the law should take into account the harm done to the spouses of the wrongfully convicted, who lose companionship and income and have to deal with the shame of having a partner in jail.

Tucker said she couldn't figure out how much money she, her family, and Phillips had spent on lawyers, travel, and things they needed from the prison commissary in the ten years they were married.

She said, "I thought marriage was for life. I was going to be with him forever, and we were going to get through this."

She said that Phillips had asked for the divorce because he had become cold and wanted her to move on.

In a May 12, 2014 opinion, a Texas Court of Appeals held that Tucker was not entitled to a portion of the compensation he received.