Man finally free after 12 years behind bars
Release closes case that began in 1989

By Max B. Baker
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

John Michael Harvey stepped from the Tarrant County Jail a free man Friday after professing his innocence for 12 years from behind bars.

The Bedford man -- convicted in 1992 of molesting a young girl -- was released with all of his worldly possessions stuffed into two sacks.

He didn't have any money. Because his mother and father died while he was in prison and with his fiancee long gone, no one was there to pick him up.

But Harvey, 40, said he knew his long nightmare was finally over.

"It is frightening that you can be falsely accused and just get out by the skin of your teeth," he said while walking down the street.

Harvey's release came two days after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that he had been wrongfully convicted. The court's rare finding of "actual innocence" came after his accuser recanted her testimony.

State District Judge Sharen Wilson expedited Harvey's transfer by asking the sheriff's department to pick him up immediately from a Dalhart prison unit instead of waiting for a regular run to transfer prisoners.

Late Friday, after receiving documentation from the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office that it would not prosecute Harvey again, the appeals court sent a mandate to Wilson allowing her to release Harvey.

Harvey stepped out of the Tarrant County Jail about 5 p.m. as the setting sun reflected off the new Radio Shack headquarters across the street.

"I'm sad," Harvey told reporters before his release. "I'm not happy as anybody would expect me to be.

"I look at the last 12 years of my life, which has been obliterated. All of my 30s are gone, my late 20s are gone, my prime's gone, and I'm saddened by that."

Harvey's attorney finally arrived late Friday from Houston to pick him up. They planned to stay overnight in Fort Worth before returning to Houston, where Harvey said he will spend the Christmas holidays with his cousin, Eva Archer-Smith.

Disappointed that she couldn't greet Harvey at the jailhouse door, Archer-Smith said she has worked for 10 years to get him out.

"I can't believe it," she said Friday, after hurriedly returning to Houston from a business trip. "It just feels kind of surreal.

"It is like the wheels of justice ground so slowly for 12 years and now, in the last 48 hours, they've taken on rocket fuel."

Harvey's release brings to a close a case that started in 1989 when he was accused of molesting the 3-year-old daughter of his former high school sweetheart. He was convicted in 1992 and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The Star-Telegram reported in 2003 that the girl, now 19 and identified only as S.R. in court documents, had backed off her earlier statements by saying that her attacker had been a very big man with an eagle tattoo on his backside. Harvey has always been thin and does not have tattoos.

In a March hearing in Wilson's court, Harvey's accuser repeatedly changed her testimony and at one point denied being molested at all.

Wilson eventually ruled that Harvey was "actually innocent," based largely on the accuser's recantation.

Wilson recommended that Harvey be released while the appeals court considered her ruling. But Harvey refused to leave prison because he did not want to register as a sex offender.

"I thank Sharen Wilson for overturning this conviction, but it took an awful long time, before her and after her," Harvey said.

"When I was falsely accused and falsely convicted, the Court of Criminal Appeals didn't ask for any written arguments and oral arguments. They just upheld my conviction.

"They were much easier in letting my life slip away and finding me guilty than they were in finding me innocent," he said. "I'm not really bitter, but I'm ready to put it behind me."

Wilson was matter-of-fact about Harvey's release.

"This is the right result under the law and the facts, and we have the process in place to reach these right results," Wilson said. "It gives people faith in the system.

"You ask me if it is a good Christmas gift to him, but I think it's a present to us all that shows that the system works," she said.

Harvey's release process began just after dawn when he was picked up at the prison unit in the Texas Panhandle by a Tarrant sheriff's deputy. Prison officials gave him a pair of tan slacks and a blue golf shirt to wear; he kept
his black prison-issue boots.

He was handcuffed for the drive to Fort Worth, just like any other prisoner, and had his first meal on the outside in the squad car.

A Big Mac, french fries and a Coke. "The all-American meal, and it was delicious," Harvey said. "It was the best meal I'd had in 12 years, as sad as that is to say."

A lot has changed since Harvey was convicted on Halloween 1992.

The Dallas Cowboys had a winning record and were on their way to the first of three Super Bowls wins in the decade. Gas was $1.15 per gallon.

Harvey was taken aback when the deputy pulled a small cellphone out on the drive. And his parents have died, he suffered a heart attack and his fiancee left him.

"The woman I would have married, the children we would have had, are gone," he said. "How do you compensate for that?"

Harvey said he is unsure what the future holds. He once worked with computers, but says he's not so sure what he'll do now. He said one day he'd like to thank his former accuser for being brave enough to come forward. For now, he is looking forward to the holidays.

"I'm going to spend some time licking my wounds, healing during the Christmas holidays with my family and trying to relax and putting it behind me," he said. "I just came out of a terrible place."

After that, Harvey -- originally from New York -- said he's moving away.

"I'm leaving Texas."