So too, it now appears, did the State of Texas. Two of them, in fact.

At the time Danziger was attacked, he and another man, his onetime roommate and friend, Christopher Ochoa, were serving life sentences for the brutal 1988 murder of 20-year-old Nancy DePriest, the mother of a 15-month-old baby girl. According to the sordid testimony in Danziger's trial, the two men repeatedly raped De Priest at an Austin Pizza Hut where she was working, including twice after she'd been shot in the back of the head.

Now a third man, Achim Josef Marino, insists he -- not Ochoa, and not Danziger -- raped and murdered DePriest. And one DNA test showed that DNA evidence discovered on DePriest did not match Ochoa's or Danziger's. It did, however, match Marino, who is serving a life sentence for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and a handful of other felonies. Sources close to the investigation confirm that there is no evidence that Danziger or Ochoa ever met Marino.

Marino says he has been trying to come clean for more than four years. As reported by Salon, Marino sent a letter to Texas Gov. George W. Bush two years ago confessing to the crime, and insisting Bush was "morally obligated" to notify attorneys for Danziger and Ochoa. Bush's office filed the letter away, but apparently notified no one, not the lawyers for Danziger or Ochoa nor the police nor the district attorney.

Bush's office might not have been the only one to ignore Marino's plea. Marino says he wrote to Bush because earlier confessions sent to the police, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Austin American-Statesman had failed to elicit any response. Ochoa's attorneys provided Salon with a copy of a six-page letter, dated Feb. 5, 1996, that Marino says he sent to the Statesman. In it he confesses to the rape and murder of DePriest.

He also, in digressions, writes of how he'd been "possessed by a spirit" that appeared to him as "a serpent dragon type of animal" when he was a child. He discusses his hatred of his mother while growing up -- trying to kill her on one occasion -- and how he emerged in 1988, after five years in prison, hating "people in general, and women in particular." Eventually, Marino circles back to his main point, insisting that he was writing the American-Statesman for "Danzinger and Ochoa sake" [sic] and, as he did in his subsequent letter to Bush, he appealed to the paper to contact their lawyers.

The police, it turns out, did look into Marino's letter in March or April 1996, according to sources familiar with the investigation, and appear close -- four years later -- to completing an investigation that might free both Ochoa and Danziger. Sources also say that assertions Marino makes in his letters -- that keys from the Pizza Hut and two bank moneybags from the restaurant could be picked up from his parents' home -- have also proven true.

This comes amid a major review by the police and Austin district attorney of 400 cases prior to 1996 -- when DNA testing began being regularly used in trials -- to see how many may have resulted in wrongful convictions. (Earlier this month a Texas judge recommended that a man who had served 16 years in prison on a rape conviction be released after DNA evidence exonerated him). It also coincides with a presidential campaign starring a Texas governor who has repeatedly defended the quality of the Texas criminal justice system, insisting its use of the death penalty under his watch has been error-free.

Bush's only comment on this particular matter, to ABC News: "Marino's case was fully looked at by the Austin police department." Perhaps. But the issue is not "Marino's case" but the cases of two ostensibly innocent men Marino pleaded with the governor -- unsuccessfully -- to address. The reexamination of those cases, by all accounts, is expected to lead to a completely different conclusion than that reached by police nearly 12 years ago.

Looking back on the Danziger/Ochoa trial, Robert A. Perkins, the presiding judge, insists that "any jury hearing that testimony would have found those two guys guilty." Now it looks like Danziger and Ochoa may turn out to prove that even a case that seems error-free can wind up dead wrong.

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