HOUSTON – James Harris said he regrets his absence at his children's high school graduation. He also missed the birth of his first grandchild.
Those are times he won't be able to make up because he said he was wrongfully convicted. The Harris County District Attorney's Office now believes him too.
From the beginning, Harris, 45, has maintained his innocence. A judge last month decided in Harris' favor, recommending his case be thrown out by the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals. Harris is currently on parole, awaiting a date for that hearing — one for which he's fought years to be awarded.
"I just kept pushing, because I knew I was innocent," Harris told KPRC 2 Friday. "I needed them to see. I needed them to do a little more digging, you know, go into their research."
In 2010, a judge sentenced Harris to 25 years in prison after prosecutors argued Harris was the man behind an alleged "drug house" in northeast Houston.
Houston Police accused Harris of running away from the house when they spotted him in June 2009, according to court documents.
Harris said his mother was the first to inform him about the arrest warrant later the night of the bust.
"When I got a call from my mother, it was like 1:00 in the morning, and she tells me there's a lot of police around," he said.
He said the police were beating on his mother's door, went to her breaker box, and turned the lights off in the house.
However, while he lives in the same neighborhood as the crime scene, he said he was ar home speaking to a neighbor when the alleged incident occurred. He said he tried to plead his case to the police.
"From that point on, I kept calling them and telling them it's not me. It's not me. It's not me. It's not me," Harris said.
Prosecutors offered Harris several plea deals. He denied each.
Harris told officers they had mistaken him for someone else. According to court documents, police identified Harris as their suspect with the help of two women police were able to stop at the house.
"It just turned my world upside down. I knew from that point on it was going to be hard — the way the system was going — to get that off of my back," he said.
Harris filed an appeal following his conviction.
"The first one got denied, the second one got denied, and I just kept pushing," Harris said.
Harris requested several DNA tests, which excluded Harris from having had any contact with scales or a “pink plastic baggie,” found at the house and taken into evidence, according to findings outlined in lab reports published February 2015, January 2016 and October 2016 outlined in court documents.
In 2013, the Harris County District Attorney's Office's Conviction Integrity Unit opened an investigation, per court records. Harris was later appointed a defense attorney, who filed a Writ of Habeas Corpus in October 2018, "seeking relief from final felony conviction," per court documents.
In June 2019, a judge granted a request for new testimony given by one of the arresting officers, which cast further doubt on Harris' guilty verdict.
According to court documents, the officer, identified as Christopher Aranda, testified that two women identified Harris. However, "he did not recall when it occurred, did not document it in his report, did not document it in their written statements."
The judge found that testimony "not reliable," after Aranda was pressed on the details of his investigation during the new hearing.
"When questioned whether he was sure in his identification of James Harris, [Aranda] responded, "Like I said, anything is possible. Maybe I was mistaken," according to court documents.
"When he said I could have had the wrong person that... I breathed a sigh of relief when he said that, but it's 11 years too late," Harris said Friday.
Harris maintains the officer lied — even falsified a police report, which claimed Harris offered to assist with the investigation.
"This officer put in his report that I told him I would tell him this and tell him that. I never said that. And I only found that out recently, when me and my lawyer started going through paperwork," Harris said.
Harris served four years of his 25-year sentence before being released on parole. He will remain on parole pending a decision by the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals. A date for that hearing hasn't been set.
Harris said he is ready to move on with his life.
“It’s been very hard,” he said. “I mean traumatizing, the whole way through, year after year in prison. Missing my kid’s graduations, missing my first grandkids being born,” Harris said.