Texas DA Craig WatkinsAs Washington state prosecutors and attorney general Rob McKenna continue to resist expansion of the use of DNA tests to possibly exonerate wrongly convicted inmates, Dallas County in Texas has just cleared its 15th prisoner in six years based on post-conviction DNA testing. Reports the AP:Three times during his nearly 27 years in prison, Charles Chatman went before a parole board and refused to admit he was a rapist. His steadfastness was vindicated Thursday [Jan. 3], when a judge released him because of new DNA evidence showing he indeed wasn’t. The release of Chatman, 47, added to Dallas County’s nationally unmatched number of wrongfully convicted inmates. “Every time I’d go to parole, they’d want a description of the crime or my version of the crime,” Chatman said. “I don’t have a version of the crime. I never committed the crime. I never will admit to doing this crime that I know I didn’t do.”One of the keys to the reversals is that the Dallas County crime lab efficiently retains biological evidence from decades-old crimes. In Washington and other states, that evidence isn’t often available (the evidence that led to the first DNA reversal in this state was belatedly discovered in an abandoned Yakima police-evidence room).Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins, says the AP, also attributes the exonerations to a past culture of overly aggressive prosecutors seeking convictions at any cost. Watkins has started a program in which law students, supervised by the Innocence Project of Texas, are reviewing about 450 cases in which convicts have requested DNA testing to prove their innocence.On the IP Texas Web site, you can read that Watkins has been nomiated as the Texan of the Year.