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Collins, a black man, was accused of rape by Mae Hill, his married white girlfriend, after her brother-in-law discovered their relationship.  At trial, the alleged victim's husband fired a shot at Collins after he testified that she had consented to his advances.  Collins was convicted after four minutes of jury deliberation.  Several jurors and the judge later admitted that they thought the woman had consented to sex with Collins, but that he deserved the death sentence for "messin' around" with a white woman.  Collins was executed in the electric chair at Kilby prison  in June 1937.  (Presumed Guilty) (ISI)  [7/05]

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.

Mobile County Detective Albert Stroh then filed a search affidavit in which he swore under oath that Roberts’ girlfriend, Sharlene Tipton, told him she had been with Roberts twenty-four hours a day and that Roberts’ handgun was the weapon used in the murders.  Based on this affidavit, a search warrant was issued, and Robert’s handgun was recovered.  A state expert positively identified the handgun as the weapon used in the murders.  Roberts was then arrested and bound over for trial.  Tipton also reportedly led police to property that had been taken from the Western Auto store.

In the summer of 1978, a Mississippi inmate named Roger McQueen claimed to have knowledge of the murders.  After interviewing McQueen, police arrested Freddie Lee Wright as well as two other individuals, Percy Craig and Reginald Tinsley.  McQueen and Craig eventually were to testify that McQueen (not Roberts) was the first member of the robbery team to enter the Western Auto store. They disclaimed any involvement by Roberts and implicated Wright as the triggerman instead. Following these arrests, all charges against Roberts were dropped.

At Wright’s trial, McQueen and Craig, both of whom had criminal records, testified against Wright.  They admitted culpability in the robbery.  (Tinsley did not testify.)  The state withheld the witness identification of Roberts as well as the search affidavit, which contained the statement by Roberts’ girlfriend.  The only evidence the state submitted was the identification of an earlier unspecified handgun (Robert’s gun) as the murder weapon.  At Wright’s trial, an expert testified that Wright’s handgun was consistent with the murder weapon.  The state also withheld evidence of its deals with McQueen and Craig.

Wright’s first trial ended in a mistrial.  The mixed race jury voted 11 to 1 to acquit him.  Wright was black and the victims were white.  The holdout juror, a white female, admitted later that she did not believe Wright was guilty, but felt "someone must be severely punished for such a senseless crime."

At Wright’s second trial the prosecution used at least seven of its ten peremptory challenges to exclude black jurors, resulting in an all white jury.  In addition to the first trial evidence, it presented the testimony of Wright’s former girlfriend, Doris Lambert.  Lambert testified that Wright admitted to the murders in June 1977, which was six months before they were committed.  The state withheld evidence of Lambert’s extensive psychiatric history as well as her drug addiction.  Lambert reportedly received help regaining custody of her children in exchange for her testimony against Wright.  The state had previously arrested Wright’s fiancée on an apparently trumped up charge and unsuccessfully tried to pressure her to testify against Wright.  The second trial jury convicted Wright and he was sentenced to death.

In 1992, McQueen was released from prison in Mississippi.  He served an Alabama sentence for armed robbery of the Greens concurrently with his Mississippi sentence.  He did not have to serve any time in Alabama.  Percy Craig was sentenced to ten years.  His later status is unknown.  Tinsley was sentenced to 25 years and was granted parole.  At a 1996 federal hearing in Mobile, McQueen recanted his testimony and apologized to Wright from the witness chair.

Two Alabama Supreme Court Justices voted in favor of a last minute stay of Wright’s execution, but seven others voted against it.  Justice Johnstone wrote in his dissent, “Whether Wright is electrocuted or injected seems insignificant compared to the likelihood that we are sending an innocent man to his death.  We should stay this execution briefly and take another look at this case under Rule 39(k).”  Wright was executed in the electric chair on Mar. 3, 2000.  (CCADP) (JD05)  [5/07]

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.

Fairchild, a functionally illiterate and mentally retarded black man, was unarmed outside his house and fell on the ground when surrounded by Pulaski County Sheriff's deputies.  The deputies released their dog on him and Fairchild was badly bitten on the neck, side, and head.  He required nine stitches to close the gash on his head.

After treatment at a hospital, Fairchild gave two confessions, neither of which agreed with the facts.  In one he gave a police supplied name of his supposed accomplice, but that man was later known to be in Colorado at the time.  The facts of the crime did not fit Fairchild.  Fairchild had blood type A, while the semen found inside Mason showed her assailant had blood type O.

During his trial, Fairchild recanted his confessions, saying that he had been threatened and beaten by Sheriff Tommy Robinson and Major Larry Dill.  He testified that when he told the police he knew nothing of the crime, Robinson hit him on the head with the barrel of a shotgun, and Dill kicked him in the stomach repeatedly.  He said he had been rehearsed for twenty minutes on what to say.  (At one point on the videotape, he is asked how many times Mason was raped.  He pauses, looks behind the camera, waits with his mouth open, then finally raises two fingers.  He looks back at the camera and says, “Two, two times.”)

Fairchild was convicted and sentenced to death.  Seven years later Fairchild's lawyers found out that at least five other “suspects” were brought in to confess to Mason's murder.  “All but one were beaten... several were bloodied... they were threatened with guns, often thrust into their faces, and they were kicked.  All were pushed, shoved, and knocked around.  And they were all told, ‘We know you were involved; we know you raped and killed that nurse; we're gonna' do to you what you did to her if you don't tell us what happened.’”  A number of these suspects testified at an evidentiary hearing, but some were too afraid to speak publicly.

In 1990, thirteen men publicly disclosed that, like Fairchild, they too had been detained for questioning about the Mason murder and were tortured.  One of these men, Michael Johnson, reported that he heard sheriffs in the next room torture Fairchild into confessing.  Two former Pulaski County Sheriff Deputies, Frank Gibson and Calvin Rollins, have admitted that physical assault and abuse were common interrogation tactics at the time of Fairchild's arrest.

Fairchild apparently gave into the brutality and confessed because unlike the others, he was mentally retarded.  At a hearing in 1991, Fairchild's conviction and death sentence were upheld.  Fairchild was executed on Aug. 31, 1995.  After Fairchild's conviction, Sheriff Tommy Robinson became a U.S. Congressman from 1985 to 1991.  After Fairchild was executed, Robinson ran for Congress as a major party candidate in 2002.  (DPIC)  [8/05]

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.

An appeals court overturned Henderson's conviction because his lawyer failed to investigate other suspects, particularly the victim's husband, Bob O'Neal.  At retrial, Henderson was again convicted after the prosecution presented a witness, Clarence Wilson, who placed the husband elsewhere at the time of the crime.  However, at an earlier federal hearing, Wilson testified differently saying he left the store while Bob O'Neal was still inside.

According to the victim's daughters from a previous marriage, the victim had talked of divorcing her husband.  She had also filed an alienation of affection suit against a woman with whom her husband was having an affair.  The husband owned the type of gun, a .22 caliber pistol, that was used to shoot his wife.  He claimed that it was stolen after the murder.  Also, according to different witnesses, he made numerous incriminating statements.  For example, at trial when the coroner testified that he believed the victim was shot in the head while sitting in a chair, the O'Neal reportedly whispered to the woman sitting next to him, "No, that's not the way it was. She dove out of the chair to miss the bullet."  While Henderson was on death row, O'Neal wrote a letter to the state insisting Henderson had been wrongfully convicted.  O'Neal died in 1992.

Prior to his second trial, Henderson was offered several plea deals that would have spared his life, including one that would have allowed him to apply immediately for parole.  But Henderson turned them down.  According to his lawyer, he never wavered on maintaining his innocence.  Henderson was executed by lethal injection on July 8, 1998.  (Chicago Tribune)  [8/08]

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.

On Aug. 26, Joe Arridy was arrested for vagrancy in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Deputies there thought he was an Army deserter because of the khaki shirt he wore.  Arridy, 21, had spent most of his life in Grand Junction, Colorado at the Colorado State Home and Training School for Mental Defectives. When he was 11, his father, Henry Arridy, an illiterate Syrian immigrant, got Joe out of the institution to live with him in Pueblo.  But officials returned him when he was 14.  A few days before the Drain murder, Arridy left the institution, hopped a train and visited several Front Range cities including Pueblo.  While in Pueblo, he could not find his family, who had moved to another house in town.  He then hopped a train to Cheyenne.

In Cheyenne, Sheriff George J. Carroll got interested in Arridy when he discovered that he was from Pueblo.  The Drain murder had made Pueblo the talk of the region.  Carroll had a part in breaking up and arresting members of the Ma Barker gang.  He had rescued a rich young Denver man who had been kidnapped.  Carroll was famous, but had not had his name in the papers in a while.  Carroll said he spent “seven or eight” hours with Arridy, and reported that Arridy gave him details of the Drain murder and expressed remorse for his part.

Aguiler was tried in Dec. 1936.  At trial Barbara Drain walked up to the defense table and pointed out Aguiler as the man who killed her sister.  Despite being questioned by the prosecution and the defense, she never mentioned Arridy.  Riley Drain, the girls’ father, testified that he had visited Aguilar in prison where he said Aguilar told him Joe Arridy accompanied him on the night of the murder.  Although that testimony was admitted, Aguilar's written confession, signed with an "X," was not allowed at either his trial or later at Arridy's trials.  Aguiler was executed in Aug. 1937.

Arridy had a sanity trial and was found to be sane.  But the judge reversed his ruling and granted a new trial that would include the sanity question as well as guilt or innocence.  During Arridy's second trial in April 1937, two Colorado State Hospital doctors and Dr. Benjamin Jefferson, who ran the Grand Junction home where Arridy stayed, testified that Arridy would have a hard time ever giving detailed statements such as Sheriff Carroll had described.  But, since Arridy was a “mental defective,” the doctors said, technically he was not insane.  The jury found Arridy guilty of the Drain murder and he was sentenced to death.

After the verdict, Arridy was returned to prison in Cañon City.  Warden Best took a liking to Arridy, visited him every day, and gave him a red wind-up train.  Arridy happily played with the train during his time on death row.  Arridy reportedly had an IQ of 46 and the mental age of a five-year-old.  The following discussion was recorded on Dec. 1, 1938:  “Don't you [Arridy] want to be killed?”  “No, I want to live, I want to live here with Warden Best.”  “Don't you want to go back to the home in Grand Junction?”  “No, I want to get a life sentence and stay here with Warden Best.  At the home the kids used to beat me.”  “Would you rather be here Joe?”  “Yes I want to stay here, I can't get in trouble here....”  “Do you remember after the little girls were killed, you ran to the train, and they arrested you in Cheyenne, Wyoming?”  “No, I don't remember that.  But I remember the judge wanted to kill me.”  “You know what it means to go to the gas house, don't you Joe?”  “Yes, they kill you there. But I don't want to be killed.  I want a life sentence and stay here all the time.”

Prison officials and the Cañon City community fought to overturn Arridy’s death sentence, but the citizens of Pueblo were outraged.  Arridy was granted a stay of execution in 1938, but the Colorado Supreme Court voted four to three to continue with the execution.  Arridy was executed by lethal gas on Jan 6, 1939.  Arridy is subject of a 1995 book Deadly Innocence by Robert Perske (1995).  (CCPL) (Pueblo Chieftain)  [5/07]

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 movie was made about the case entitled, "In the Blink of an Eye."  (NL)  [6/05]

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' case had become "a horse of a different color."  Newly discovered evidence, Shaw wrote, "casts serious doubt on Jones' 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]

Felker was convicted of the rape and murder of 19-year-old Evelyn Joy Ludlam, 19.  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 body was found fourteen days later on Dec. 8.  It was found floating in Scuffle Creek in Twiggs County.  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)

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’ execution, but Davis was executed by lethal injection on May 17, 1995.  (NY Times)  [1/07]

Baldwin, a black man, was convicted of the murder of Mary Lee Peters, the godmother of Baldwin’s child.  Peters, an 84-year-old West Monroe woman, was beaten to death during a robbery of her home.  After the trial, defense lawyers found a hotel receipt proving that Baldwin was hundreds of miles away in another state on the night of the murder.  In response, the prosecution claimed that he had driven to the hotel in order to establish an alibi and then returned to Louisiana to commit the murder.  If Baldwin staged his alibi, the prosecution did not explain why he did not have the receipt available for trial.

The main witness against Baldwin was his girlfriend, Marilyn Hampton, who received a life sentence, rather than the death penalty, for her part in the murder. The prosecution claimed that Hampton waited outside in a car while Baldwin committed the murder.  Baldwin allegedly had confessed to the crime and was convicted by an all-white jury.  The judge, the prosecutor, and Baldwin's own court-appointed attorney used racially derogatory language during the trial.  Baldwin was executed in the electric chair on Sept. 10, 1984.  Shortly before the execution, a former sheriff's deputy swore in a statement that Baldwin had been beaten and tortured into a confession by white officers.

Howard Marsellus, the chairman of the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole, was troubled that he may have allowed an innocent man to be put to death.  The governor had appointed Marsellus and Marsellus felt he had to go along with the governor wishes that there be no recommendation for clemency in any capital case.  The governor visited Hampton in prison before signing Baldwin’s death warrant.  Marsellus believed the purpose of the visit was to induce Hampton to maintain her original testimony.  Two months later the Board of Pardons and Paroles received Hampton's file marked "Expedite."  Seven years into a life sentence for first-degree murder Hampton was freed.  (JusticeDenied)  [2/07]

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' 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 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 at the end of the week.  The prosecutor was able to bring out that Ewing had been working elsewhere at the end of the week and his 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 on May 21, 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 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.  [9/05]

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’ 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.  (JusticeDenied)  [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."  (Houston Chronicle)  [1/07]

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’ 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]

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)  [1/07]

Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of murdering his three daughters by setting his house on fire.  Lighter fluid was kept on the front porch of Willingham’s house as evidenced by a melted container found there.  Some of this fluid entered the front doorway of the house carried along by fire hose water.  It was alleged this fluid was deliberately poured to start the fire and that Willingham chose this entranceway so as to impede rescue attempts.  The prosecution also used arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances.  Fire investigator, Gerald Hurst, reviewed the case documents including the trial transcripts and an hour-long videotape of the aftermath of the fire scene.  Hurst said, "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire.  It was just a fire."

In addition to the alleged arson evidence, a jailhouse informant claimed Willingham confessed, and witnesses testified that Willingham did not try hard enough to save his children.  Dr. James Grigson, the notorious “Dr. Death,” testified at sentencing that Willingham cannot be rehabilitated in any manner, and that he poses a continuing threat to society.  Grigson regularly gave such testimony regarding convicted defendants after conducting superficial examinations that no serious person would regard as supporting his diagnoses.  Willingham was executed by lethal injection on Feb 17, 2004.  (Chicago Tribune)

Odell Barnes 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’ 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’ relationship with Bass and the fact that Barnes’ 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’ 14EEE shoe size, it easily could have been used to identify or exonerate him.

There were numerous splashes of blood spread widely around the room where Bass’ body was discovered.  Since the killer was alleged to have worn coveralls in committing the crime, it would seem likely that his coveralls would contain a fair amount of blood spatter.  However, coveralls allegedly belonging to Barnes contained only two tiny bloodstains.  At trial these bloodstains were identified as being of Bass’ blood type.  DNA tests later showed that the blood did come from Bass.  Tests also revealed that the blood contained citric acid, which is a preservative used in stored blood.  The medical examiner concluded that the stains did not come from natural bleeding of a normal human being.  Thus the bloodstains presumably were planted using a vial of Bass’ stored blood.  Barnes’ mother testified that Barnes arrived home about 11:50 p.m. that night wearing a tan coat and gray pants rather than coveralls as the prosecution claimed.

Brooks initially said he was alone in his car when he saw Barnes.  His sister, Bobbie Jean Brooks, later said that she was with him in the car.  She could not formally identify Barnes, but she did say her brother told her that the person they saw was not Barnes.  Subsequent to Barnes’ trial, additional witnesses have come forward and have implicated another man as Bass’ murderer.  Appeals based on the post-conviction evidence were unsuccessful and Barnes was executed on Mar 1, 2000.  (JusticeDenied) (Houston Press)  [1/07]

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.

No direct evidence linked Coleman to the murder, but the prosecution theorized at trial was that the victim knew the perpetrator because there were no signs of forced entry to her house. A report later surfaced that there was a mark near the lock on the front door that was possibly a pry mark. In addition, the victim's hands, her sleeves, and her upper thighs were blackened with dirt. This evidence suggests she was attacked and dragged outside before she and her assailant went inside.

Coleman had an alibi witness, whose testimony and timecard made it almost impossible for Coleman to have had time to commit the murder, but a prosecution witness with a changing story, made it seem that Coleman had an additional half-hour to commit the rape and murder.

An investigation by Jim McCloskey and attorney Kitty Behan implicated McCoy's closest neighbor as the real killer and undermined the state's weak case against Coleman. As his execution date approached, Coleman received enormous press attention, including a cover story on Time Magazine. This press attention put pressure on Gov. Wilder's office to postpone the execution until the new evidence could be heard. Rather than postpone the execution, Wilder's office scheduled a dubious polygraph test for Coleman on the morning of his execution. No defense personnel or polygraphist was allowed to witness it. Within hours, it was announced that Coleman had failed and he was soon executed. Results of the test were never released because Coleman was dead and the "case was closed." A 1997 book by John Tucker entitled May God Have Mercy tells Coleman’s story.

In 2001, Centurion Ministries and some news organizations petitioned the judiciary to permit post-execution DNA tests. However, none of the victim’s semen stained clothes had been preserved, undermining confidence in the chain of custody of the semen evidence. The state, known formally as the Commonwealth of Virgina, claimed to have preserved a tiny sample of the assailant's semen, but it also had a sample of Coleman’s semen, as indicated in Tucker’s book. Coleman, himself, indicated apprehension at giving the state a semen sample, and rightly so. Once the state had custody of Coleman's semen it could take a small swab of it and claim the swab was a sample of the assailant's semen.

In retrospect Coleman should have given blood, a mouth swab, or some other form of DNA. It is not clear why Coleman had to give the state a semen sample since the state had no intention of performing DNA tests and would actively oppose them for years.  Apparently, such a submission was prompted by Coleman's defenders who trying to force the state to perform such tests. Secondly, if Coleman's semen, rather than another form of his DNA, was required in early DNA testing, it could have been given to his attorney and held in confidence.  Then if the state agreed to DNA testing, or a judge ordered it, Coleman's semen could have been given to an independent testing lab without it passing into the state's hands.

Given the state’s record of often extreme hostility on the Coleman case, there is little basis to “trust” that the state would honestly submit evidence that could potentially prove it executed an innocent man.  In 2006, DNA tests were eventually ordered which “proved” Coleman guilty. No one doubts the semen sample allegedly taken from the victim matched Coleman’s DNA. However, there exists reasonable doubt that the sample ever came from the victim. In its eagerness to obtain DNA tests, Coleman’s defender, Centurion Ministries, promised to accept the results of the tests. Out of apparent pride in keeping its promise, it now says it knows that Coleman is guilty.  Whatever Coleman's actual guilt, the state wrongly convicted him and executed him based on the evidence then available.  Its evidence that Coleman might not have had an alibi for the crime is hardly proof of anything.  The state might have reliably proved Coleman's guilt, posthumously, by preserving the victim's semen stained clothing.  It chose not to, leaving its hypothesis of Coleman’s guilt an unproven assertion.  (TruthInJustice) (CM)  [6/08]

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]