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DALLAS – Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins, whose office leads the nation in wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing, says prosecutors who intentionally withhold evidence should face criminal charges or other harsh sanctions.

Watkins said the worst offenders might deserve prison time, and that he’s considering a campaign to mandate disbarment for any prosecutor who intentionally withholds evidence from the defense.

“Something should be done,”Watkins told The Dallas Morning News in Sunday’s editions. “If the harm is a great harm, yes, it should be criminalized.”

Thirty-one people have been formally exonerated through DNA testing in Texas and 17 in Dallas County – both figures the highest in the U.S. since 2001. Those totals don’t include at least four whose exonerations are not yet official.

There’s no law in Texas calling for criminal charges for prosecutors who intentionally withhold evidence. But the Innocence Project of Texas, a nonprofit legal clinic that worked to free many of the Dallas County exonerees, plans to push for it in the session that starts in January.

Conroe man competing in triathlon dies

THE WOODLANDS – An autopsy is planned to determine how a Conroe man competing in the first leg of a triathlon died.

Randolph Parnell, 51, was found Saturday floating face down in the water during the swimming leg of the CB&I triathlon at Northshore Park in The Woodlands.

Parnell competed in the triathlon the past two years, officials said.

Edie Connelly, a Montgomery County Justice of the Peace, said Parnell told a lifeguard in a kayak that he was OK when asked how he was coping. “They later they found him floating face down,” Connelly said in a story in Sunday’s online edition of the Houston Chronicle.

Bush hailing recovery of Kansas town

CRAWFORD – President Bush is hailing the remarkable recovery of one southern Kansas town, a year after a monster tornado destroyed almost everything in sight.

Bush plans to address Greensburg’s graduating class of 18 boys and girls and personally hand out each diploma on Sunday. It is the first time the president is delivering a high school commencement speech, an honor recognizing how far the town has come.

The tornado that flattened Greensburg was the worst in the United States in years. It raged at 205 mph, spanned more than a mile and a half, and killed 11 people.

Soldier from Granite Shoals dies in Iraq

GRANITE SHOALS – A 21-year-old soldier from Granite Shoals has died in Iraq.

The U.S. Department of Defense said Sunday that Army Spc. Jeffrey F. Nichols died Thursday when his vehicle struck an explosive device.

Nichols was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) at Fort Polk, La.

Compiled from Advocate Wire Reports