Seventy years after the state of Texas executed 21-year-old Tommy Lee Walker for against the law he didn’t commit, Dallas County has formally acknowledged what his household and neighborhood all the time knew: Walker was harmless. On Wednesday, county officers declared that Walker’s 1954 conviction and 1956 execution for the rape and homicide of Venice Parker have been “profound miscarriage[s] of justice,” per ABC Information.
“Mr. Walker’s arrest, interrogation, professionalsecution and conviction have been enjoyabledamalestally comprofessionalmised by false or unreliready evidence, coercive interrogation tactics, and racial bias,” the county’s decision famous, as reported by the Demise Penalty Info Heart. “[Which represented] egregious violations of Mr. Walker’s constitutional rights.”
Walker was simply 19 when he was arrested and charged within the 1953 killing of Parker, a 31-year-old white retailer clerk and mom who was raped and fatally stabbed whereas ready at a bus cease close to Dallas Love Subject. Her dying ignited racial panic in a segregated metropolis already rife with rumors of a so-called “Negro Prowler.” In accordance with the Innocence Venture, a whole bunch of Black males have been rounded up, detained, and interrogated with out proof. A police officer claimed Parker recognized her attacker as a Black man, even supposing her throat had been slit and witnesses stated she by no means spoke.
Walker was a kind of swept up, even supposing on the time he was witnessing the beginning of his solely little one, an alibi supported by 10 witnesses. He had no legal document. Nonetheless, prosecutors pursued him aggressively, relying nearly totally on an alleged confession that Walker later recanted. Because the courtroom’s latest declaration acknowledged: “The one direct proof connecting Tommy Lee Walker to this offense is a confession obtained by way of using coercive techniques.”
An all-white jury convicted him. At sentencing, Walker stated, “I really feel that I’ve been tricked out of my life.” Earlier than he was executed within the electrical chair on Could 12, 1956, he used his final phrases to proceed proclaiming his innocence. Walker’s execution sparked grief and outrage in Dallas’ Black neighborhood that also lingers. After his dying, Marion Butts, writer of the Dallas Specific, reportedly wrote, “Walker is lifeless, however he’ll perpetually reside within the minds and conscience of those that have the flexibility to cause.” And greater than 5,000 folks attended his funeral.
The Dallas County Commissioners Courtroom’s decision acknowledges that Walker’s arrest, prosecution, conviction and execution have been marred by prosecutorial misconduct, racial bias, and constitutional violations, calling the case “basically compromised by false or unreliable proof, coercive interrogation techniques, and racial bias.” His exoneration is the results of a years-long collaborative overview led by the Dallas County District Lawyer’s Conviction Integrity Unit, the Innocence Venture, and Northeastern College College of Legislation’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Venture. The overview uncovered proof that then–District Lawyer Henry Wade systematically struck nonwhite jurors, withheld exculpatory proof, and engaged in inflammatory conduct. Wade, who would go on to realize nationwide prominence, even instructed jurors he wished to “pull the swap” himself and later testified to his private perception in Walker’s guilt on the witness stand.
For Walker’s son, Edward “Ted” Smith, the declaration brings a measure of peace as he carries the generational trauma of his father’s dying.
“It was laborious rising up with no father,” Smith stated in a press release. “Once I was at school, children talked about their dads, and I had nothing to say. This received’t carry him again, however now the world is aware of what we all the time knew — that he was an harmless man. And that brings some peace.”
Smith, now 72, attended Wednesday’s listening to, the place he met Joseph Parker, Venice Parker’s son, for the primary time. The 2 males embraced. “I’m so sorry to your loss,” Smith reportedly instructed him. In accordance with the workplace of Dallas County Felony District Lawyer John Creuzot, it was “a second that transcended generations of ache” as Parker additionally affirmed Walker’s innocence, per ABC Information.
“Acknowledging what we all know to be fact — that false proof, misconduct, and overt racism led to the execution of an harmless man — albeit 70 years later, is important to the integrity of our authorized system, the historic cloth of this nation, and most significantly it’s an acknowledgment of the unspeakable burden Mr. Smith and his household have carried for many years,” Chris Fabricant, considered one of Smith’s attorneys, expressed.
“Justice doesn’t expire with time,” Cruezot concluded.
