Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

On Dec 1, 1977, Warren and Lois Green were murdered during a robbery of the Western Auto store that they owned and operated in Mount Vernon.  Shortly before the murders, a customer, Mary Johnson, noticed a man entering the store as she was leaving.  After she heard about the murders, she identified Theodore Otis Roberts from a police photo spread as the man she saw entering along with his blue car that she saw parked outside.

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Brian Keith Baldwin, a black male, was executed for the torture and murder of 16-year-old Naomi Rolon, a white female.  On Mar 12, 1977, Baldwin, 18, and Edward Dean Horsley, 19, escaped from a youth detention center in North Carolina.  Within hours of their escape, the two hitched a ride with Rolon in Hudson, NC, and drove to Alabama.  Presumably Rolon went to Alabama involuntarily as her original plan was just to drive across town.  Baldwin got out in Alabama and stole an El Camino pickup truck, while Horsley drove off with Rolon.  The two males may have planned to release Rolon and drive away in a car Rolon could not identify.  Rolon was subsequently found murdered, and a day afterwards, Horsley and Baldwin were captured by police.

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Barry Lee Fairchild was convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 22-year-old Marjorie “Greta” Mason.  Mason was a white Air Force nurse and a former homecoming queen.  Six days after the rape and after the media had reported many details of the crime, the police received a tip from an unnamed informant, a man described in police files as inaccurate about half the time, with a tendency to exaggerate.  He named Barry Lee Fairchild as one of the culprits.

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Wilburn L. Henderson was sentenced to death for the murder of Willa Dean O'Neal.  The murder occurred during an alleged robbery of $41 at a Ft. Smith furniture store that the victim owned with her husband.  In the store police found a yellow piece of paper containing two phone numbers that had been given to Henderson by a real estate agent.  Henderson conceded that the paper was his and that he must have dropped when he was in the store days before the murder.  Under police interrogation Henderson had given a statement that he had just happened to have been in the store when another man committed the crime.  He later recanted the statement saying he only made it because he feared police would harm him.  According to the prosecution, Henderson had obtained a gun from a pawnshop and then pawned it back just after the murder.  However, ballistics tests on the gun were inconclusive that it was the murder weapon.

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On Aug. 15, 1936, Dorothy Drain, 15, and her sister Barbara, 12, were hit in the head with the blunt edge of a hatchet in their Pueblo home at 1536 Stone Ave.  Their parents, Riley and Peggy Drain, returned after a night out to find Dorothy dying and Barbara in a coma.  Dorothy had also been raped.  The hatchet was found in the home of Frank Aguilar and he was arrested on Aug 20.  Riley Drain had fired Aguilar from his job at a WPA project.  Pueblo Police Chief J. Arthur Grady believed all evidence clearly revealed Aguilar was the murderer.

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Bennie Eddie Demps was sentenced to death for the murder of Alfred Sturgis inside Florida State Prison.  At trial, inmate Larry Hathaway testified that he reported seeing James Jackson stab Sturgis with a shank, while Demps held down Sturgis and Harry Mungin acted as lookout.  Demps, Sturgis, and Hathaway were all convicted murderers.  Two prison guards, A.V. Rhoden and Hershel Wilson testified that Sturgis named Demps as one of his three assailants.  Demps had previously been sentenced to death for a double homicide, but his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional because it was carried out in an arbitrary manner.  Demps claimed prison officials framed him for the Sturgis killing because he had escaped his earlier death sentence.

Before trial, Hathaway told an attorney for a prisoners rights group that he did not witness the Sturgis murder. After the trial, three inmates came forward to say that Hathaway was nowhere near the scene of the stabbing.  In 1994, Hathaway told a defense investigator that he had lied at trial.  Seven months after the Sturgis killing, inmate Leroy Colbroth was murdered.  Several inmates swore in depositions that Colbroth was killed because he had stabbed Sturgis. Other inmates later said that they saw Colbroth kill Sturgis or that he admitted killing him.  This information was withheld from Demps' lawyers.  Some of these inmates were willing to help Demps, but did not, stating in sworn affidavits that prison officials either threatened them with retribution if they testified or offered incentives, such as transfers or shorter sentences, for refusing.

Gerald Kogan, the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, later stated that he had "grave doubts about Kemps," even though he did not vote to give Demps a new trial.  Demps was executed by lethal injection on June 7, 2000.  (Chicago Tribune) (JD12)  [8/08]

Along with Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs and Walter Rhodes, Jesse Joseph Tafero was convicted of murdering Florida highway patrolman, Phillip Black, and visiting Canadian constable, Donald Irwin, at an I-95 rest stop.  The conviction was based largely on the testimony of Rhodes, who named Tafero as the shooter.  The state withheld from the defense results of a polygraph that indicated Rhodes had failed.  The state also withheld gunpowder test results that indicated Rhodes was the only person to have fired a gun.

Rhodes recanted his testimony on three occasions in 1977, 1979, and 1982, stating that he, not Tafero, shot the policemen.  A statement from a prison guard corroborating Rhodes' recantations was suppressed and found years later.  Rhodes has since reverted to his original testimony.  The trial judge, "Maximum Dan" Futch, had been a highway patrolman three years before the trial and wore his police hat to work.  He kept a miniature replica of an electric chair on his desk.  He did not allow Tafero to call witnesses, nor would not allow him hearings on this decision.  Two eyewitnesses, testifying for the state, said that while the shots were being fired, one officer was holding Tafero over the hood of the car.  Tafero was executed in the electric chair on May 4, 1990.  Officials interrupted the execution three times because flames and smoke shot out of his head.

Like Tafero, Jacobs was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1981.  In Jacobs' 1992 appeal, the new evidence was presented which resulted in the reversal of her conviction.  Had the evidence been found before Tafero's execution, it is highly probable that his conviction would have been likewise overturned.  Jacobs later accepted a plea bargain in which she did not have to admit guilt and was released.  She affirms her innocence.  A 1996 ABC TV movie was made about the case entitled In the Blink of an Eye.  (CWC) (NY Times)  [6/05]

Leo Jones, a black man, was convicted of the sniper killing of white police officer Thomas Szafranski, 28, and sentenced to death.  The main witness against Jones later recanted.  Two key officers in the case had left the Jacksonville Police Department under a cloud, and allegations that one of them beat Jones before he supposedly confessed had gained credence.

A retired police officer, Cleveland Smith, came forward and said Officer Lynwood Mundy had bragged that he beat Jones after his arrest. Smith, who described Mundy as an "enforcer," testified that he once watched Mundy get a confession from a suspect by squeezing the suspect's genitals in a vise grip. He said Mundy unabashedly described beating Jones.  Smith waited until his 1997 retirement to come forward because he wanted to secure his pension.

More than a dozen people had implicated another man as the killer, saying they either saw him carrying a rifle as he ran from the crime scene or heard him brag he had shot the officer.  Even Florida Supreme Court Justice Leander Shaw, who formerly headed a division of the state attorney's office, wrote that Jones's case had become "a horse of a different color."  Newly discovered evidence, Shaw wrote, "casts serious doubt on Jones's guilt."  Shaw and one other judge voted to grant Jones a new trial.  But a five-judge majority ruled against Jones.  Jones was executed one week later in the electric chair on March 24, 1998.  (DPI)  [11/05]

Ellis Wayne Felker was convicted of the rape and murder of 19-year-old Evelyn Joy Ludlam.  The conviction was obtained through hair analysis, which is notoriously unreliable, and by claimed similarities between the murder and another crime for which Felker was convicted years before.  Felker was put under police surveillance within hours of Ludlam's disappearance on Nov. 24, 1981.  Ludlam's body was found in Twiggs County fourteen days later floating in Scuffle Creek.  An autopsy indicated that she had been strangled and put her death within the previous five days.  However, when police realized this would have ruled Felker out as a suspect because he had been under surveillance, the findings of the autopsy were changed.

An unqualified lab technician conducted the autopsy.  During appeals, Felker's lawyers showed notes and photos of Ludlam's body to pathologists who unanimously agreed that she could not have been dead for longer than three days. In spite of the medical opinion, appeal courts upheld Felker's conviction.  Felker was executed on Nov. 15, 1996.

The state hid boxes of evidence from Felker's attorneys until just before his execution.  Some held exonerating evidence, including another person's confession.  Others held materials that could have been DNA tested.  (Felker v. The State)

Lena Baker, a black woman, was convicted of murdering Ernest B. Knight, a white grist mill owner.  After Knight hired Baker to care for him while he nursed a broken leg, a sexual relationship developed between the two.  Following Baker's attempts to break off the relationship, Knight found her and forced her to go with him.  Baker managed to escape, but Knight found her again and locked her in a gristmill.  Later, according to Baker, during a tussle between the two over a gun, the gun went off killing Knight.

In 1998 while the director of a prisoner's rights group, John Cole Vodicka, was visiting the Randolph County Courthouse, the Court Clerk asked him if he wanted to look into Baker's case. The clerk gave him the court file, which included the 10-page trial transcript.  Vodicka later came into contact with a great-nephew of Baker, and in 2003 helped in the filing of a pardon application for her with the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.  Vodicka expressed confidence that "almost any lawyer could have pled Lena Baker not guilty by reason of self-defense.”  The Board of Pardons and Paroles apparently agreed with him and granted Baker a posthumous pardon on Aug. 30, 2005.  (JD29 p8)  [10/08]

Eight men were convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the death of police officer Matthew J. Deegan.  On May 1, 1886 there were general strikes throughout the United States in support of an 8-hour workday.  On May 3 there was a rally of striking workers at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant in Chicago.  This rally ended with police firing on the workers.  Two workers died although some newspaper accounts reported six fatalities.

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Girvies L. Davis, a black man, was convicted by an all white jury of the murder of Charles Biebel, 89.  Davis allegedly confessed to the crime and was sentenced to death.  There was no physical evidence or eyewitness testimony linking him to the murder.  Davis, a 4th grade dropout, has been described as retarded and quite slow intellectually.  After several days of questioning while in police custody, officers allege that Davis sent them a note from his cell stating that he wished to confess to a number of crimes.  Subsequently, in the middle of the night, police took him out of his cell, and took him for an automobile ride.  Two officers drove him around for hours before stopping and pulling out a briefcase from the trunk of the car.  Davis said the officers placed some papers on the hood of the car, took off their gun belts, and told him he could either sign the papers or run.

"I signed everything they had," Davis said. "I was fearful for my life.  If they would have had more there, I would have signed more.  I found out later I had signed statements for 10 murders and 10 attempted murders and my Miranda rights."  When asked if he had read the papers before signing, Davis said, "Naw, I couldn't even read back then.  I could barely sign my name."

The St. Clair County State's Attorney, Robert Haida, conceded that some of the confessions were false as other people were convicted of those crimes.  Davis denied ever sending a note from his cell or seeing it before trial.  Haida conceded that someone else wrote the note, but suggested Davis dictated it to a cellmate.  While on death row, Davis learned to read and write.  He earned a high school equivalency certificate and became an ordained minister.  He spent much of his time reading the Bible.  A former police chief, a former prosecutor, and a retired judge worked to stop Davis's execution, but Davis was executed by lethal injection on May 17, 1995.  (NY Times)  [1/07]

Alvin R. Moore Jr. was sentenced to death for the murder of JoAnn Wilson, 23, the wife of a former co-worker.  Wilson called police and said, "Somebody stabbed me."  After police officer Bill Fields arrived on the scene, he asked her who stabbed her and she reportedly told him, "Elvin did it."  Fields later thought the victim meant "Alvin."  Moore, who is black, was having an affair with Wilson, who was white.  Moore was arrested with a drop of blood on his pants.  Tests showed the blood was Type O, the same as Wilson's, but shared by about 45% of the population.  Moore had a different blood type.  A stereo and a plastic jug containing pennies from Wilson's home were found in Moore's car.

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While traveling from Boston to New York, Dominic Daley, 34, and James Halligan, 27, both Irish immigrants, were arrested on Nov. 12, 1805 for the murder of farmer Marcus Lyon.  Lyon's horse was found wandering three days earlier and his murdered body was found two days earlier in Wilbraham.  Wilbraham was then located in Hampshire County.  The defendants were incarcerated in Northampton while their captor received a $500 reward.

At trial, the main evidence against the defendants was the testimony of 13-year-old Laertes Fuller who said he saw the pair on the road, then saw them again minutes later with the victim's horse.  It is not clear why the defendants would have the victim's horse as the horse was later seen wandering around freely.  Legally, witnesses were required to be 14 years old to testify, but the judge overrode this rule in Fuller's case.  Fuller's testimony suggested the defendants killed Lyon during the interval between his sightings of the defendants.  However, Lyon had been shot and, when questioned, Fuller reported he did not hear a gunshot, even though he could not have been very far from the murder.

There appears to be reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the defendants because:  (1) Fuller was at best marginally qualified to testify.  (2) The details of his testimony contained nothing that compelled one to believe its accuracy.  (3) The reward offered created an incentive for perjury.  (4) Even if Fuller's testimony was true, it did not definitively establish that the defendants had murdered Lyon.  Besides the lack of credible prosecution evidence, there was a lack of due process because the defendants were not allowed to testify in their own defense and were only assigned a lawyer two days before trial.

The defendants were convicted and sentenced to death.  Both were hanged on June 5, 1806 in Northampton before a crowd of 15,000.  It was alleged and widely accepted in the 20th century that Daley and Halligan were framed and convicted because they were Irish Catholics, but historical records do not support any overt prejudice.  In 1984, Gov. Dukakis issued a proclamation exonerating the two.  (BUSL) (Resources)  [11/09]

Larry Griffin was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Quintin Moss.  Moss was killed in a drive-by shooting while allegedly dealing drugs on a St. Louis street corner.  The conviction was based largely on the testimony of Robert Fitzgerald, who had been at the scene of the killing.  He testified at trial that he saw three black males in the car from which the shots were fired and that he could identify Griffin as one of them.  He testified that Griffin shot at the victim through the window of a car with his right hand.  Griffin's lawyer, a recent law school graduate, had never tried a murder case.  The lawyer did not challenge this testimony, even though Griffin was left-handed.

Griffin's fingerprints were not found on the car or weapons.  All evidence against him was circumstantial.  Evidence suggests that Fitzgerald was promised a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony.  The jury was not provided with this information.  Fitzgerald later recanted his testimony.  He said the investigating officers showed him a photograph of Griffin and told him, "We know this man is involved."  Fitzgerald was then presented with five photos from which he identified Griffin.  Griffin's lawyer failed to investigate an alibi witness.  The prosecution was able to bring out that the alibi witness had erred about the day he and Griffin had been together, thus making it appear that the alibi had been fabricated.

The prosecution failed to reveal that there were two additional eyewitnesses who confirmed that Griffin was not involved in the murder. The first testified that he witnessed the shooting, and he did not recognize any of the three men who killed the victim. He knew Griffin and was certain that Griffin was not in the car with the shooters. The other witness, a 16-year-old member of a gang led by Griffin's brother at the time of the murder, also testified that Larry Griffin was not involved in the shooting and named the three men who were all members of the gang led by Griffin's slain brother. He was able to describe the exact sequence of events leading to Moss's murder and to testify to the killers' motive. He also was able to identify correctly the place where the car and guns had been abandoned and later found by the police.

Despite the compelling evidence of Griffin's innocence, appeals courts upheld his conviction and death sentence.  Griffin was executed by lethal injection on June 21, 1995.  (EqualJustice)  [1/07]

Henry Lee Hunt was convicted of the murders of Jackie Ray Ransom and Larry Jones.  Ransom had married Dorothy Locklear while she was still married to Rogers Locklear.  Dorothy and Rogers then hired A. R. Barnes to kill Ransom so Dorothy could collect on a $25,000 life insurance policy.  The policy paid a double indemnity for accidental death including homicide.  Barnes recruited his brother, Elwell Barnes to help in the murder.  Someone shot Ransom to death on Sept. 8, 1984 in the woods near a bar.  A week later, on Sept. 14, someone shot and killed a man named Larry Jones, apparently because Jones was telling police what he knew about the Ransom murder.  Jones was implicating Rogers Locklear in the murder, but made no mention of Hunt.  Jones was buried in a shallow grave.

A. R. Barnes confessed to the crimes.  Subsequently, he recanted and blamed Hunt, who had a criminal record and was in prison for a drug offense. Other witnesses also pointed to Hunt, although their initial statements conflicted with each other.  According to two reconstruction experts, witness Jerome Ratley's account of Jones's murder could not have happened the way that Ratley told the jury at Hunt's trial.  Prosecutors introduced a shovel into evidence that they said Hunt used to bury Jones, but they did not tell the jury that the soil on the shovel did not match the soil in which Jones had been buried.

Hunt consistently maintained his innocence and passed two lie detector tests regarding the murders.  While such tests do not prove Hunt's innocence, they raise doubt about his guilt.  Elwell Barnes signed an 1989 affidavit in which he wrote that Hunt "has been convicted for a crime that A. R. Barnes, Jerome Ratley, Roger Locklear and myself committed."  The prosecution withheld evidence and then "lost" field notes and other files that would have undermined the state's case.  In 2003, the state was refusing to allow lawyers to see the evidence that remained.  Hunt was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 13, 2003.  (Charlotte Observer) (Greensboro News & Record)  [5/08]

Frank Ewing, a black man, was convicted of raping a 25-year-old white woman after being brought to the victim and identified by her.  The victim, A. F., was raped at her home on Stokes Lane, west of Hillsboro Pike, a few miles south of Nashville.  A police officer testified that Ewing confessed to the crime.  However, Ewing had a strong alibi that he was working 25 miles away at the time of the crime.  The alibi was supported by multiple witnesses, none of whom had known Ewing long or had a plausible reason to lie.  The alibi was also supported by written records.

At trial, however, Ewing's white employer, J. M. Summers, was his only alibi witness, and on the day of his testimony he had misplaced records of Ewing's employment.  The rape had occurred on a Monday.  Without his records, Summers mistakenly remembered that Ewing had left his employment after the rape at the end of the week.  Ewing had actually left Summers employment on Wednesday.  The prosecutor was able to bring out that Ewing had been working elsewhere at the end of the week and that consequently Summers' statement was wrong.  On appeal, further alibi evidence was submitted including the written records, but appeals courts declined to reverse Ewing's conviction.  Ewing was executed in the electric chair on May 31, 1919.  (Wrongly Convicted: Perspectives on Failed Justice)  [7/08]

Maurice F. Mays, a black man, was convicted of murdering Mrs. Bertie Linsey, a white woman.  Mays was sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair on Mar. 15, 1922.  Nevertheless, in 1926, Sadie Brown Mendil, a white woman, confessed to the crime in Virginia.  She said she had dressed up as a black man to kill the woman with whom her husband was having an affair.  Virginia authorities found the confession to be credible, although authorities in Tennessee dismissed it.

On a Saturday morning, a presumably black intruder shot Mrs. Linsey in her bed.  The police arrested Mays that day and took him to the Knox County Jail after Ora Smyth, the only witness to the crime, had identified him as the man responsible.

Angry whites began to gather near the Knox County Jail.  Some even entered the building to search for Mays, but he had been moved to a jail in Chattanooga for his own safety.  In the evening, the mob outside the jail was about a thousand strong.  They decided to storm the jail and lynch Mays.  Using large timbers, guns, and dynamite, the mob entered the jail and freed the white prisoners.

The jailer quickly called Mayor McMillan who requested the assistance of the National Guard to break up the riot.  The first 17 soldiers to arrive were stripped and beaten by the rioters.  An hour later, about 150 more soldiers arrived but the storming of the jail continued.  Around midnight, the National Guardsmen heard of several hold ups by a band of blacks in the black section of Knoxville, near Vine Avenue and Central Street.  A platoon was sent to the scene and many civilians followed the soldiers.

The white mob then began raiding and looting many businesses, particularly pawn shops and hardware and furniture stores.  There was only evidence of blacks breaking into a single establishment.  Eventually snipers and the troops began to exchange fire.  Hundreds were wounded in the fighting and seven people (only one of them white) were killed.  After the riots, many blacks immediately started to leave Knoxville, bringing with them whatever possessions they could carry.  (TBJ) (Mays v. State)  [9/05]

Phillip Workman robbed a Wendy's restaurant with a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol.  On leaving, police officers gave chase and Workman tripped on a curb.  He yelled, “I give up!” and tried to pull his gun from his pants to give to officers.  As he tried to surrender his weapon, he was hit on the head with a flashlight.  At that moment his pistol went off, aimed straight up at the sky.  Suddenly he was surrounded by gunfire, and he tried to run again, but tripped and his gun went off, firing another shot into the air.  Workman escaped the immediate melee, but a civilian found him hiding under a truck.  He was covered with blood from his head wound, and had a shotgun wound to his buttocks.

At the scene of the shootout, a police officer, Lt. Ronald Oliver, lay dying from a bullet that passed completely through his body.  Oliver would soon be dead.  Workman was convicted of Oliver's murder and sentenced to death.  In 1990, exculpatory ballistic evidence was discovered that showed that Oliver was not shot by a bullet from Workman's gun.  Instead, Oliver must have been killed by “friendly fire.”  An eyewitness at trial, Harold Davis, recanted testimony that he had seen the shooting.  The police report on the crime scene never noted Davis's presence and five other people near the scene do not remember seeing Davis.

A civilian eyewitness, Steve Craig, who never testified at trial, said he saw Officer Parker fire a shotgun at Workman.  Craig also stated that police told him, "There was no need to talk about this ... unless it was with someone from the department."  In the trial transcript, Officers Stoddard and Parker repeatedly testified that only two people fired guns, Workman and Oliver.  Ballistics and Craig's statements imply Officers Stoddard and Parker committed perjury.  The new evidence caused Workman's scheduled execution date to be postponed several times.  Workman was executed by lethal injection on May 9, 2007.  (Justice: Denied)  [1/07]

Ruben Cantu was convicted of murdering Pedro Gomez, a Mexican laborer.  Gomez was robbed and shot to death while he was sleeping in a house under construction on Briggs Street in South San Antonio.  The house was right across the street from where Cantu, then 17, lived with his father.  Cantu was executed by lethal injection on Aug. 24, 1993.  Following Cantu's execution, witnesses have come forward to exonerate him.

Juan Moreno, who was wounded during the attempted robbery and a key eyewitness in the case against Cantu, now says that it was not Cantu who shot him and that he only identified Cantu as the shooter because he felt pressured and was afraid of the authorities.  Moreno said that he twice told police that Cantu was not his assailant, but that the authorities continued to pressure him to identify Cantu as the shooter after Cantu was involved in an unrelated wounding of a police officer.  "The police were sure it was [Cantu] because he had hurt a police officer.  They told me they were certain it was him, and that's why I testified.”

David Garza, Cantu's co-defendant during his 1985 trial, signed a sworn affidavit saying that he allowed Cantu to be accused and executed even though he was not with him on the night of the killing.  Garza stated, "Part of me died when he died.  You've got a 17-year-old who went to his grave for something he did not do.  Texas murdered an innocent person."

Sam D. Millsap, Jr., the Bexar County District Attorney who charged Cantu with capital murder, said he never should have sought the death penalty in a case based on testimony from an eyewitness who identified a suspect only after police showed him Cantu's photo three separate times.  Miriam Ward, forewoman of the jury that convicted Cantu, noted, "With a little extra work, a little extra effort, maybe we'd have gotten the right information. The bottom line is, an innocent person was put to death for it. We all have our finger in that."  (Chronicle)  [1/07]

Leonel Torres Herrera was sentenced to death for murdering two police officers, David Rucker and Enrique Carrisalez.  The murders occurred at separate locations along a highway between Brownsville and Los Fresnos.  Enrique Hernandez, Carrisalez's patrol car partner, identified Herrera.  Hernandez also said Herrera was only person in the car that they stopped.  Carrisalez, who did not die until 9 days after he was shot, identified Herrera from a single photo.  A license plate check showed that the stopped car belonged to Herrera's live in girlfriend.

In 1984, after Herrera's brother Raul was murdered, Raul's attorney came forward and signed an affidavit stating that Raul told him he had killed Rucker and Carrisalez.  A former cellmate of Raul also came forward and signed a similar affidavit.  Raul's son, Raul Jr., who was nine at the time of the killings, signed a third affidavit.  It averred that he had witnessed the killings.  Jose Ybarra, Jr., a schoolmate of the Herrera brothers, signed a fourth affidavit.  Ybarra alleged that Raul Sr. told him in 1983 that he had shot the two police officers.  Herrera alleged that law enforcement officials were aware of Ybarra's statement and had withheld it in violation of Brady v. Maryland.  Armed with these affidavits, Herrera petitioned for a new trial, but was denied relief in state courts.  One court did dismiss Herrera's Brady claim due to lack of evidence.  Herrera's appeal eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where it was argued in Oct. 1992.

In Jan. 1993, the Supreme Court ruled that Herrera's actual innocence was not a bar to his execution.  He had to show that there were procedural errors in his trial in order to gain relief.  Justice Rehnquist wrote that the "presumption of innocence disappears" once a defendant has been convicted in a fair trial.  Dissenting Justice Blackmun wrote:  "The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder."  Herrera was executed four months after the ruling on May 12, 1993.  (Herrera v. Collins)  [1/07]

Billy Conn Gardner was sentenced to death for the murder of Thelma Row, 64, a cafeteria supervisor at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas.  Row was shot during a robbery of the school's cafeteria and died 11 days later of her injuries.  Prior to the robbery, Row's co-worker, Paula Sanders, told her husband, Melvin, that several thousand dollars in daily cafeteria receipts were processed in a back room at the school.  After prosecutors threatened to bring charges against Melvin, Melvin claimed that he invited Gardner to participate in the robbery.  According to Melvin, Gardner was the robber while he, Melvin, was the getaway driver.  In exchange for his testimony Melvin received complete immunity from prosecution for the murder and probation for pending forgery and firearms charges. The state also agreed not to prosecute Paula Sanders.

The assailant had worn a stocking mask.  Paula, who was in the cafeteria at the time of the robbery said that she could not provide a description of the assailant, because her back was turned.  However, before Row died, she described the assailant as having a "bony face ... and a two-inch goatee."  Paula had known Gardner.  The state was unable to produce a single witness who recalled ever seeing Gardner with a goatee.  Two other witnesses to the shooting, Carolyn Sims and Lester Matthews, the school custodian, stated the assailant had reddish-blond hair.  However, Gardner had black hair.  Matthews nevertheless positively identified Gardner as the shooter even though he said he had only seen the shooter for three or four seconds, and did not actually identify him until his third police interview, three months after the crime.

Paula testified that she was unaware of the robbery plans, but failed to mention that she received several phone calls only minutes before the robbery, and that according to Sims, she appeared "nervous and upset" after taking these calls.  Gardner's lawyer never interviewed Paula and only met with his client once, for fifteen minutes, prior to jury selection.  Sims was never deposed until years after the trial.  Gardner was executed by lethal injection Feb. 16, 1995.  (Atlantic) (NY Times)  [8/08]

David Wayne Stoker was sentenced to death for the murder of David Mannrique (Manrique), a clerk at an Allsup's convenience store in Hale Center, Texas.  Mannrique was shot three times and robbed of $96.81.  No physical evidence placed Stoker at the store or established that he owned the gun that killed the victim. Five months after the crime, Carey Todd told police that Stoker had confessed to him and had given him the murder weapon, which Todd then gave them.  At trial, Todd denied under oath that the prosecution gave him any incentives to testify against Stoker.  However, Todd had felony drug and weapons charges against him dropped later that same day.  He possibly faced being charged with Mannrique's murder had he not been willing to finger someone else.  Ronnie and Debbie Thompson also testified that Stoker had confessed the murder to them.

Ronnie Thompson later recanted his testimony. Thompson said he had signed the statement written by his wife, Debbie Thompson, without reading it because she claimed Stoker had raped her, a claim he later found to be false. He claimed prosecutors threatened to try him for perjury if his trial testimony differed from his affidavit.  During Stoker's trial, his wife left him to move in with Todd.  Both she and Todd then each received half of a $1000 Crime Stoppers reward for naming Stoker. Police Chief Richard Cordell had testified there was no local Crime Stoppers, but later admitted he was one of the group's founders.

Prosecutors claimed that a shell casing found in Stoker's car linked him to the murder weapon.  However, Stoker did not own the car until months after the murder.  A federal appellate judge concluded that Todd was just as likely the murderer.  It would appear, however, that Todd is more likely the murderer, as the only reliable evidence in the case is that Todd possessed the murder weapon and knew that it was used in the murder.  Stoker was executed on June 16, 1997.  (CPIT) (Atlantic)  [8/08]

Bobby Ray Hopkins was convicted of the murders of Jennifer Weston, 19, and Sandy Marbut, 18.  He was sentenced to death.  The murders occurred at the victims' apartment at 601-B South First St. in Grandview, TX.  On the night of the murders the victims threw a party at which 30 to 35 people attended.

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David Wayne Spence was convicted of the murder of Jill Montgomery and sentenced to death.  Montgomery, 17, along with Raylene Rice, 17, and Montgomery's boyfriend, Kenneth Franks, 18, were found murdered in Speegleville Park at Lake Waco.  Three other individuals, Gilbert Melendez, Tony Melendez, and Muneer Deeb were also convicted in connection to the murders.  Truman Simons, a night jailer who had unsupervised contact with inmates, largely developed the cases against all four.  Simons operated his own perjury factory in that he was able to get numerous inmates to testify to any story he wanted them to.  His only problem was coming up with believable stories that fit the facts.

Spence was executed on April 3, 1997.  Marvin Horton, the police lieutenant who supervised the case, said, "I do not think David Spence committed this crime."  Ramon Salinas, the homicide detective on the case, added, "My opinion is that David Spence was innocent.  Nothing from the investigation ever led us to any evidence that he was involved."  One of the inmates who testified at Spence's trial, Robert Snelson, said, "We all fabricated our accounts of Spence confessing in order to try to get a break from the state on our cases."  An “award-winning” pro-prosecution book, Careless Whispers by Dallas journalist Carlton Stowers was written about the murders.  It reportedly lionizes Simons who “brought Spence to justice.”  (DP News) (JD08 in Capital Punishment article) [1/07]

Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of murdering his three daughters by setting his house on fire.  Under police interrogation, Willingham said that his wife, Stacy, had left the house around 9 a.m.  After she got out of the driveway, he heard his one-year-old twin daughters cry, so he got up and gave them a bottle.  The children’s room had a safety gate across the doorway which his two-year-old daughter, Amber, could climb over but not the twins.  He and Stacy often let the twins nap on the floor after they drank their bottles.  Since Amber was still in bed, he went back into his room to sleep.  Willingham's house was warmed by three space heaters, one of which was in the children's bedroom.  This heater had an internal flame.  Amber had been taught not to play with the heater though she reportedly got "whuppings every once in a while for messing with it."

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Carlos De Luna was sentenced to death for the murder of a convenience store and gas station clerk named Wanda Jean Lopez.  Lopez, 24, was stabbed at a Sigmor gas station on South Padre Island Drive in Corpus Christi.  Her blood splattered on the store walls, the cash register, and the floor.  Forty minutes after the murder, police found De Luna hiding under a pick-up truck on a side street a few hundred yards from the station.  He had taken off his shirt and shoes.  But there was no blood on his face or pants. And when his shirt and shoes were found, no blood was on them either.

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Odell Barnes, Jr., was convicted of the murder of Helen Bass, his friend and lover.  He was sentenced to death.  Bass, 42, was beaten and stabbed with a kitchen knife, then killed with a gunshot to the head.  While driving by in a car, witness Robert Brooks claimed to have seen Barnes, wearing coveralls, hurdle a fence in Bass's backyard at 10:30 p.m.  Brooks allegedly witnessed this event under bad lighting conditions from 40 yards away while wearing tinted glasses.  He first made this statement before it was known that Bass did not arrive home from work until 11:30 p.m.  In addition, Brooks barely knew Barnes.  According to the prosecution theory, Barnes kicked in her back door at 10:30 p.m. and waited an hour for her to return home.  Such a theory seems dubious given Barnes's relationship with Bass and the fact that Barnes's mother was picking up Bass from work at 11:15 p.m.  A shoe print found on the back door and mentioned in a police report, was wiped clean.  Given Barnes's 14EEE shoe size, it easily could have been used to identify or exonerate him.

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Roger Coleman was convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of his sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy. He was sentenced to death and executed on May 20, 1992. Before this crime, Coleman was accused of attempted rape in April 1977. He was convicted because the victim identified him as the perpetrator despite his having a solid alibi provided by his high school principal. In Jan. 1981, Coleman was suspected of masturbating in front of two librarians at the public library, but maintained his innocence. Charges against him were initially brought in connection with his later murder charge, but apparently were only brought to prejudice the public since they were later dropped.

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Dennis Waldon Stockton was convicted of murdering his friend Kenny Arnder.  Arnder's body was found in North Carolina, but Stockton was tried in Virginia based on the assumption that Arnder was killed there and his body was moved to the North Carolina side of the border.  Stockton was convicted solely on the testimony of Randy Bowman, a convict, who in many respects was a more likely suspect in the killing.  On appeal in 1995, Stockton's attorney presented affidavits from Bowman's former wife, his son, and a friend, stating that Bowman admitted to committing the murder.  The affidavits had little effect and Stockton was executed two days later on Sept. 27, 1995 by lethal injection.

Stockton's case is the subject of a book entitled Dead Run: The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America by William F. Burke, Jr. and Joe Jackson.  (TWM)

William Harrison, the manager of a wealthy estate, went out to collect rent money from tenants.  When he did not return at his usual time, his servant, John Perry, was sent to look for him.  Harrison's hat and comb were found and had been slashed.  Harrison's collar band was also found with bloodstains.  Harrison was presumed murdered and searches were made for his body, but it was never found.

For unknown reasons, John Perry confessed to the murder of Harrison and implicated his brother and mother.  Perry later retracted his confession and his brother and mother professed their innocence, but all were convicted of the murder and hanged.  Two years after the executions, Harrison turned up alive.  He told a story of having been kidnapped and held as a slave in Turkey.  (CWP) (CW) (FJDB)  [12/06]

Teng Xingshan was convicted of the murder of Shi Xiaorong.  A chopped up body identified as Shi's was found in Mayang County, Hunan Province in April 1987.  Police settled on Teng as the guilty party because he was a butcher and the dismemberment was "very professionally" done.  Teng soon confessed to the murder, allegedly after police beat it out of him.  However, he protested his innocence all the way to the execution ground.  Authorities alleged that Teng had sex with Shi and killed her because he suspected she stole his money.  Teng was executed by gunshot in Jan. 1989.

Teng's family had heard reports that Shi was alive in neighboring Guizhou province as early as 1993, but it took years to verify the reports and Teng's family lacked the funds and the courage to sue the government.  The case first received publicity in May 2005, when the family formally filed a lawsuit with the Hunan Higher People's Court.  News reports of another Chinese murder victim turning up alive in March 2005 may have prompted the decision.  Shi denied ever meeting Teng and said she had been sold into marriage to a man in eastern Shandong Province a month before the chopped up body was found.  Shi returned to her hometown in Guizhou Province in 1993.  Teng was posthumously exonerated in Jan. 2006.  (UPI)  [4/08]