Texas Man Exonerated by DNA Evidence After 25 Years of Maintaining His Innocence
by Jo Ellen Nott
Martin Lucio Santillan, now 50 years old, was fully exonerated in the Frank Crowley Criminal Courts in Dallas, Texas, on March 22, 2023. His 25 years of wrongful imprisonment ended because Centurion Ministries believed his innocence after a simple interview in 2008.
When 21-year-old Damond Wittman was shot multiple times in a Dallas nightclub parking lot on July 14, 1997, Santillan was with members of his family and friends in a bar in another part of Dallas 30 minutes away. Even though six witnesses testified that Santillan was with them all evening, the jury convicted him of capital murder based on mistaken identification.
Only one eyewitness out of the four present that night testified. The prosecution overlooked the fact that witness admitted to drinking the entire day before the 2 a.m. shooting in the east Dallas neighborhood of Deep Ellum. Luckily for Santillan, the Dallas Police Department recovered a bloody hockey jersey the suspect was said to have been wearing a few blocks away from the murder scene. That Dallas Stars jersey would be the key to Santillan’s innocence a quarter of a century later.
An innocence organization based in Princeton, New Jersey, brought Santillan’s case to the Conviction Integrity Unit of the Dallas County DA’s Office in 2008. Centurion Ministries sponsored Santillan’s case, paying for the first two DNA tests performed on the bloody hockey jersey. The DNA testing done in 2008 and 2014 was not sophisticated nor sensitive enough to establish evidence beneficial to Santillan.
The third time was a charm. In 2021, the Conviction Integrity Unit agreed to test the jersey using a newer, more sensitive DNA testing kit. Biological deposits found on the cuffs of the jersey sleeves revealed DNA profiles of two unknown individuals. The FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (“CODIS”) identified one of the individuals. The newest DNA results also excluded Santillan.
The successful third DNA testing led to Santillan’s release from prison in December 2022 and his exoneration in March 2023. In November 2023, a Texas grand jury indicted a different man for the death of Damond Wittman. Santillan is the 70th wrongfully convicted individual to be saved by Centurion’s intervention and advocacy over the last 40 years.
The Postconviction Testing of DNA Evidence program also helped in securing Santillan’s well deserved freedom. The Bureau of Justice Assistance grants funding through the program to assist jurisdictions in defraying the costs of the postconviction DNA testing. Typical costs associated with the testing are related to additional personnel, staff overtime, and testing supplies.
Santillan was helped post-release by the Dallas organization Miles of Freedom, founded in 2009 by another Centurion exoneree, Richard Miles. Miles of Freedom helps the newly released with housing, life skills, job placement, and reintegration. Santillan worked in the food pantry of Miles of Freedom and in landscaping to help ease his transition from prison to the outside world.
Sources: Centurion, The Dallas Morning News, Forensic, Miles of Freedom
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