3:36 pm UTC Feb. 4, 2021 Illustration: Andrea Brunty, USA TODAY Network For decades, Ralph Petty spent his days as a prosecutor for the Midland County District Attorney’s Office trying criminal cases before a slate of judges and winning hundreds of convictions in the process. The chain-smoking assistant DA was known as a legal scholar to his peers in this west Texas community where the wind blows hard and uninterrupted, and oil pump jacks dot the flat countryside. But in his free time, Petty did something that now casts doubt on hundreds of cases he prosecuted. Show caption Hide caption In this photo from earlier in his career, Ralph Petty, a former prosecutor for the Midland County District Attorney’s Office, moonlighted as a paid clerk...