Initially intheir for a 1987 conviction in his wife's murder case, he was released from prison two and a half decades later, DNA evidence having cleared him of any involvement in the crime.
His nightmare began when his wife was beaten to death in 1986 by a man who, over twenty years later, was determined to be dishwasher Mark Alan Norwood.
In 2014, he published a memoir titled Getting Life: An Innocent Man's 25-Year Journey from Prison to Peace.
Many years after his marriage to Christine Morton ended in tragedy and injustice, he met Cynthia May Chessman, who became his second wife. After being released from prison, he was reunited with his son, Eric, who, tragically, had spent his childhood believing that his father was a murderer.
Texas Governor Rick Perry signed the Michael Morton Act (or Texas Senate Bill 1611) into law, securing a more open pre-trial process of discovery and evidence presentation in cases like Morton's.