Henry Wade
Encyclopedia
Henry Menasco Wade was a Texas
lawyer who participated in two of the most notable U.S. court cases of the 20th century, the prosecution of Jack Ruby
for killing Lee Harvey Oswald
and the U.S. Supreme Court
's decision legalizing abortion
, Roe v. Wade
. In addition, Wade was District Attorney when Randall Dale Adams
, the subject of the documentary film The Thin Blue Line
, was convicted in the murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer.
, outside Dallas. A good student, Wade, along with five of his seven brothers, entered the legal profession. Shortly after graduating from the University of Texas
, in 1939, Wade joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation
, then headed by J. Edgar Hoover
. Wade's assignment as Special Agent was to investigate espionage cases along the East Coast of the United States and in South America. During World War II
, Wade served in the U.S. Navy, taking part in the invasions of the Philippines
and Okinawa.
Attorney. In 1947, Wade joined the Dallas County District Attorney
's Office. He won election to the top job only four years later, a position he would hold for thirty-six years straight, from 1951 until his voluntary retirement in 1987.
candidate in 1956 against the staunchly conservative Republican
U.S. Representative Bruce Alger
of Dallas County. Alger prevailed to win his second of five House terms, 102,380 (55.6 percent) to 81,705 (44.4 percent). After his defeat, Wade remained district attorney for another thirty years.
was assassinated in downtown Dallas, just blocks from Wade's headquarters in the Dallas County Courthouse. Wade recounted that Cliff Carter, a member of newly sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson
's staff, telephoned him three times that night.
Wade lost the opportunity to try Lee Harvey Oswald
for Kennedy's murder when Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby
shot the suspect just two days later, but became nationally recognized for prosecuting Ruby himself for Oswald's murder. In that celebrated trial, Wade went head-to-head against the famed San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli
(See Ruby v. Texas
.)
and Linda Coffee
mounted a 1970 constitutional challenge to the Texas criminal statutes prohibiting doctors from performing abortions. Norma McCorvey
("Jane Roe"), a single woman who has since recanted the claim that her pregnancy was the result of rape, was signed up as the representative plaintiff. The challenge sought a declaratory judgment that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were unconstitutional on their face, and an injunction restraining the defendant from enforcing the statutes. The lower court refused to grant Roe's desired injunction, but declared the criminal abortion statutes were void. Consequently, both side cross-appealed. The case worked its way through the appellate process, culminating in the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade
decision which made abortion
legal in the United States
. Until that decision, Wade had never lost a case.
, Texas Lawyer magazine named him as one of the 102 most influential lawyers of the twentieth century.
’s documentary film The Thin Blue Line
. The documentary is tells the biography of Randall Dale Adams
. Adams was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to death for the murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. The execution was scheduled for May 8, 1979 but U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., ordered a stay only three days before the scheduled date. Instead of conducting a new trial, Governor Bill Clements
commuted Adams’s sentence to life in prison. Adams was exonerated in 1988 after serving 12 years in prison. Similar cases of exonerated men have recently arisen, putting the legality of Wade's practices in question.
As of July 2008, fifteen persons convicted during Wade's term as Dallas County District Attorney have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were accused in light of new DNA evidence. Because of the culture of the department to "convict at all costs," it is suspected that more innocent people have been falsely imprisoned or even executed. Project Innocence Texas
currently has more than 250 cases under examination.
A recent report by John Council of Texas Lawyer, however, analyzed the overturned convictions on a case-by-case basis and found that the wrongful convictions were generally caused by unfortunate coincidences and victim mistakes in identifying their attackers, especially because of the impossibility of DNA evidence at the time of trial. The high number of overturned cases seems to be largely a result of Wade's unusual policy of maintaining all evidence even after a trial had been completed, as well as the emphasis that the issue has been given in the Dallas area, especially under the direction of current DA Craig Watkins
. In addition, the prosecutors interviewed for the report denied misdeeds or wrong-doing on both individual and departmental levels, and also accused pundits of imagining the "convict at all costs" culture for their own purposes.
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
lawyer who participated in two of the most notable U.S. court cases of the 20th century, the prosecution of Jack Ruby
Jack Ruby
Jacob Leon Rubenstein , who legally changed his name to Jack Leon Ruby in 1947, was convicted of the November 24, 1963 murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby, who was originally from Chicago, Illinois, was then a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas...
for killing Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
and the U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
's decision legalizing abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
, Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, , was a controversial landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion,...
. In addition, Wade was District Attorney when Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams was wrongly convicted of murdering police officer Robert W. Wood, and was subsequently sentenced to death. He served more than 12 years in prison, at one point coming within 72 hours of being put to death...
, the subject of the documentary film The Thin Blue Line
The Thin Blue Line (documentary)
The Thin Blue Line is a 1988 documentary film by Errol Morris, depicting the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to die for a murder he did not commit. Adams' case was reviewed and he was released from prison approximately a year after the film's release.-Synopsis:The film...
, was convicted in the murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer.
Biography
Wade, one of eleven children, was born in Rockwall County, TexasRockwall County, Texas
As of the census of 2000, there were 43,080 people, 14,530 households, and 11,972 families residing in the county. The population density was 334 people per square mile . There were 15,351 housing units at an average density of 119 per square mile...
, outside Dallas. A good student, Wade, along with five of his seven brothers, entered the legal profession. Shortly after graduating from the University of Texas
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
, in 1939, Wade joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
, then headed by J. Edgar Hoover
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
. Wade's assignment as Special Agent was to investigate espionage cases along the East Coast of the United States and in South America. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Wade served in the U.S. Navy, taking part in the invasions of the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
and Okinawa.
Career
He was first elected Rockwall CountyRockwall County, Texas
As of the census of 2000, there were 43,080 people, 14,530 households, and 11,972 families residing in the county. The population density was 334 people per square mile . There were 15,351 housing units at an average density of 119 per square mile...
Attorney. In 1947, Wade joined the Dallas County District Attorney
Dallas County District Attorney
The Dallas County District Attorney is the elected district attorney of Dallas County, Texas.The office prosecutes violations and offenses of Texas state law.. The office is notable for arguing Roe v. Wade and prosecuting Jack Ruby...
's Office. He won election to the top job only four years later, a position he would hold for thirty-six years straight, from 1951 until his voluntary retirement in 1987.
1956 congressional race
Wade was the unsuccessful DemocraticDemocratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
candidate in 1956 against the staunchly conservative Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
U.S. Representative Bruce Alger
Bruce Alger
Bruce Reynolds Alger is an American politician and a former Republican U.S. representative from Texas, the first to have represented a Dallas district since Reconstruction. He served from 1955 until 1965. He was born in Dallas but was reared in Webster Groves, Missouri, a small suburb of St...
of Dallas County. Alger prevailed to win his second of five House terms, 102,380 (55.6 percent) to 81,705 (44.4 percent). After his defeat, Wade remained district attorney for another thirty years.
President Kennedy assassination
In the early afternoon hours of November 22, 1963, President John F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
was assassinated in downtown Dallas, just blocks from Wade's headquarters in the Dallas County Courthouse. Wade recounted that Cliff Carter, a member of newly sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
's staff, telephoned him three times that night.
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
for Kennedy's murder when Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby
Jack Ruby
Jacob Leon Rubenstein , who legally changed his name to Jack Leon Ruby in 1947, was convicted of the November 24, 1963 murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby, who was originally from Chicago, Illinois, was then a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas...
shot the suspect just two days later, but became nationally recognized for prosecuting Ruby himself for Oswald's murder. In that celebrated trial, Wade went head-to-head against the famed San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli
Melvin Belli
Melvin Mouron Belli was a prominent American lawyer known as "The King of Torts" and by detractors as 'Melvin Bellicose'. He had many celebrity clients, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Errol Flynn, Chuck Berry, Muhammad Ali, Sirhan Sirhan, the Rolling Stones, Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker, Martha...
(See Ruby v. Texas
Ruby v. Texas
Ruby v. Texas was a decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal appellate court in the State of Texas, that Jack Ruby, accused killer of Lee Harvey Oswald had been denied a fair trial...
.)
Roe v. Wade
Wade, as Dallas County District Attorney, was the named defendant when attorneys Sarah WeddingtonSarah Weddington
Sarah Ragle Weddington is an American attorney and lecturer from Texas who gained worldwide fame when she and Linda Coffee represented "Jane Roe" in the landmark Roe v. Wade case in the United States Supreme Court.-Family and education:She is the daughter of Lena Catherine and Rev...
and Linda Coffee
Linda Coffee
Linda Nellene Coffee is an attorney living in Dallas, Texas. Coffee is best known for representing Norma McCorvey , a pregnant woman who desired an abortion, in the precedent-setting United States Supreme Court case Roe v...
mounted a 1970 constitutional challenge to the Texas criminal statutes prohibiting doctors from performing abortions. Norma McCorvey
Norma McCorvey
Norma Leah McCorvey , better known by the legal pseudonym "Jane Roe", was the plaintiff in the landmark American lawsuit Roe v. Wade in 1973. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned individual states' laws against abortion by ruling them unconstitutional...
("Jane Roe"), a single woman who has since recanted the claim that her pregnancy was the result of rape, was signed up as the representative plaintiff. The challenge sought a declaratory judgment that the Texas criminal abortion statutes were unconstitutional on their face, and an injunction restraining the defendant from enforcing the statutes. The lower court refused to grant Roe's desired injunction, but declared the criminal abortion statutes were void. Consequently, both side cross-appealed. The case worked its way through the appellate process, culminating in the Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade
Roe v. Wade, , was a controversial landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the issue of abortion. The Court decided that a right to privacy under the due process clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion,...
decision which made abortion
Abortion in the United States
Abortion in the United States has been legal in every state since the United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, on January 22, 1973...
legal in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Until that decision, Wade had never lost a case.
Later life
Despite the loss of the Roe case — and the unpopularity of the results with many conservative Texas voters — Wade himself was not blamed, and his political career did not suffer. He continued to serve in office for an additional fourteen years, and afterwards remained a fixture around the new Crowley Courts Building, where members of the Dallas Bar called him "the Chief." In 1995, the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center was named in his honor, and in 2000, shortly before his death from Parkinson's diseaseParkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system...
, Texas Lawyer magazine named him as one of the 102 most influential lawyers of the twentieth century.
Legacy
Wade once again gained national attention in 1988 with the release of Errol MorrisErrol Morris
Errol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...
’s documentary film The Thin Blue Line
The Thin Blue Line (documentary)
The Thin Blue Line is a 1988 documentary film by Errol Morris, depicting the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man convicted and sentenced to die for a murder he did not commit. Adams' case was reviewed and he was released from prison approximately a year after the film's release.-Synopsis:The film...
. The documentary is tells the biography of Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams
Randall Dale Adams was wrongly convicted of murdering police officer Robert W. Wood, and was subsequently sentenced to death. He served more than 12 years in prison, at one point coming within 72 hours of being put to death...
. Adams was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to death for the murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. The execution was scheduled for May 8, 1979 but U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., ordered a stay only three days before the scheduled date. Instead of conducting a new trial, Governor Bill Clements
Bill Clements
William Perry "Bill" Clements, Jr. was the 42nd and 44th Governor of Texas, serving from 1979 to 1983 and 1987 to 1991. Clements was the first Republican to have served as governor of the U.S. state of Texas since Reconstruction...
commuted Adams’s sentence to life in prison. Adams was exonerated in 1988 after serving 12 years in prison. Similar cases of exonerated men have recently arisen, putting the legality of Wade's practices in question.
As of July 2008, fifteen persons convicted during Wade's term as Dallas County District Attorney have been exonerated of the crimes for which they were accused in light of new DNA evidence. Because of the culture of the department to "convict at all costs," it is suspected that more innocent people have been falsely imprisoned or even executed. Project Innocence Texas
Innocence Project
An Innocence Project is one of a number of non-profit legal organizations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand dedicated to proving the innocence of wrongly convicted people through the use of DNA testing, and to reforming the criminal justice systems to...
currently has more than 250 cases under examination.
A recent report by John Council of Texas Lawyer, however, analyzed the overturned convictions on a case-by-case basis and found that the wrongful convictions were generally caused by unfortunate coincidences and victim mistakes in identifying their attackers, especially because of the impossibility of DNA evidence at the time of trial. The high number of overturned cases seems to be largely a result of Wade's unusual policy of maintaining all evidence even after a trial had been completed, as well as the emphasis that the issue has been given in the Dallas area, especially under the direction of current DA Craig Watkins
Craig Watkins
Craig Watkins is currently the district attorney for the Dallas County, Texas, USA. He became the first African American district attorney in Texas when he was elected in 2006....
. In addition, the prosecutors interviewed for the report denied misdeeds or wrong-doing on both individual and departmental levels, and also accused pundits of imagining the "convict at all costs" culture for their own purposes.