Victims of the State
TIB - TYS

Name Index

Delbert Lee Tibbs was convicted of shooting to death 27-year-old Terry Robert Milroy and raping 17-year-old Cynthia Nadeau. Both victims were white and Tibbs, a black man, was sentenced to death. Tibbs, a theological student, had a solid alibi and did not match the Nadeau's initial description, but was later identified by her anyway. She admitted being under the influence of illegal drugs at the time of the attack. This identification was the crux of the prosecution's case. The prosecution also presented the testimony of a jailhouse informant who recanted his testimony following the trial. The Florida Supreme Court threw out the conviction for insufficient evidence. Tibbs was released in 1977 but faced a possible retrial. All charges against Tibbs were dropped in 1982 after the prosecutor from the first trial came forward and said that he would testify on behalf of Tibbs at any new trial. This prosecutor stated that he would tell the jury that the case against Tibbs was tainted from the start, and that the police and prosecutors knew it.  (CWC) (PC) (FLCC)  [7/05]

Derek Tice - See Norfolk Four

Darby Tillis - See Cobb & Tillis

James Calvin Tillman was convicted of rape because a victim making a cross-racial identification picked out his picture from a series of photos. Tillman was released in 2006 after a DNA test excluded him as the rapist. In 2007, both houses of the Connecticut legislature voted unanimously to award Tillman $5 million for his wrongful imprisonment.  (AP News) (IP)  [9/06]

Steve Gary Titus was convicted of raping a 17-year-old girl on a secluded road south of Sea-Tac Airport. He was convicted in March 1981, but in June 1981 the conviction was overturned and charges were dropped, after a serial rapist was identified as the perpetrator. Titus was profiled in the book Predator by Jack Olson, a book about the serial rapist and the unfortunate Titus who was blamed for one of the rapes. Titus died of a heart attack shortly after his release. Titus's son was awarded $2.6 million to be paid over 20 years for Titus's false imprisonment.  (Seattle Times)

Five men were convicted of charges related to the murder of 31-year-old oil field worker Jerry Tobias. It was argued by some that Tobias overdosed on drugs, went to sleep in the bed of a pickup, and froze to death without waking up. The truck where Tobias's body was found was parked by a butcher shop owned by Laurie Moore.
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Cameron Todd, a police officer, arrested three adults and three teenagers for setting fire to a trailer. One of them, a 13-year-old girl accused him and others of raping her. Todd was charged with Capital Rape (in 1997) and was linked in press hysteria as being one of the ringleaders of a major child prostitution, drug, and pornography operation. The girl who made the initial accusation has since recanted.  (MS Justice) (Todd v. State)  [3/05]

(Federal Case tried in San Francisco)  Iva Toguri was charged with being the legendary “Tokyo Rose” and convicted of treason. During World War II, American servicemen in the Pacific invented the myth of a Japanese radio broadcaster they dubbed “Tokyo Rose,” who called on them to lay down their arms. The name “Tokyo Rose” was never broadcast on Radio Tokyo. Toguri was a native-born Japanese-American who visited Japan to see relatives in 1941. She was stranded there when war broke out between Japan and the United States in Dec. 1941. Toguri ended up being one of about 20 female English language broadcasters on Radio Tokyo.

Toguri as well as other native English-speaking broadcasters were able to subvert intended Japanese propaganda into harmless rhetoric. Broadcasters were able to slip double-entendres, innuendos, and sarcastic references into their broadcasts, as Japanese censors did not understand American idiom. Toguri actually helped the Allied war effort by giving advance warnings of air raids under the guise of threatening Allied forces. She also helped by reporting on Tokyo weather conditions.

The U.S. military imprisoned Toguri without charges after the end of World War II. When Toguri was permitted to return to the U.S. in 1948, she did so. Upon arrival she was arrested and charged with eight counts of treason. Her prosecution was the most expensive prosecution directed toward a single person in U.S. history to that date. At trial most reporters thought she would be acquitted.  The jury deadlocked on the charges, but the judge refused to declare a mistrial. After 80 hours of deliberation, the jury convicted her on a vague count of speaking about a loss of ships in Oct. 1944. Toguri was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment and was released in 1956. In 1976, the Chicago Tribune had its Tokyo correspondent track down the witnesses responsible for that count. Both witnesses admitted perjuring themselves under pressure from federal prosecutors. In Jan. 1977, U.S. President Ford pardoned Toguri. In 1993 a book about the case was published entitled The Hunt for ‘Tokyo Rose.’ Toguri died at age 90 in 2006.  (Justice: Denied)  [2/07]

Kevin Alan Tolliver, a black man, was convicted of murdering Claire Schneider, his white live-in girlfriend. According to Tolliver, Schneider killed herself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Although she was clinically depressed and had not taken her Paxil medicine in 4 days, Schneider's shooting of herself in the mouth, happened so unexpectedly that it appeared to be an involuntary suicide. She may not have been aware that the gun was loaded. The shooting occurred shortly after midnight.

Tolliver was a severe dyslexic since childhood, and emotionally went to pieces following his girlfriend's death. He screamed and cried. Two neighbors in his building, hearing his screams called police, but police came and left without finding the source of the disturbance. Police finally were summoned back by Tolliver's ex-wife, more than an hour after the shooting. Police arrested Tolliver immediately and performed no investigation. They did not test either Tolliver's or Schneider's hands for gunshot residue.

The coroner was prepared to rule that Schneider's death was self-inflicted, until the police gave their theory. He still ruled that her death was undetermined. The prosecution argued murder and Tolliver was convicted because of ineffective defense and the perjured testimony of a jailhouse snitch. Tolliver is serving 16 years to life imprisonment.  (Free KT)  [4/08]

Steven Toney was sentenced to life in prison for a 1982 rape. After a federal appeals court ruled that Toney had a right to DNA testing, Centurion Ministries paid for the tests that proved his innocence. The county prosecutor had fought the petition for new tests, insisting that two eyewitnesses had identified him. When the test results were revealed, the prosecutor urged Toney's immediate release, which occurred in 1996.  (CM) (IP)  [5/05]

Angel S. Toro was convicted of robbing a Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge in Dorchester and murdering a clerk, Kathleen Downey, 47, during the course of the robbery. The crime occurred on Easter Sunday. The conviction was overturned in 2004 after two prosecution witnesses recanted their testimony and authorities admitted that a key police report was never given to Toro's counsel. Prosecutors dropped charges against Toro due to lack of evidence.  [11/05]

Jesus Torres - See Bronx Five

Pedro Torres was arrested for drinking beer in a Dallas convenience store. A computer check showed that he was wanted for the murder of a Houston man. He then was tried for that murder and convicted, reportedly because of eyewitness testimony. However, Torres's arrest warrant was actually issued for a different Pedro Torres. Torres's work records and and the other Pedro Torres's roommate helped to overturn his conviction. Torres was released in 1986 after 8 months of imprisonment.  [4/08]

Andrew Toth, Michael Sabol, and George Rusnok, all Hungarian immigrants, were sentenced to death for the beating murder of Michael Quinn. The murder occurred during a labor riot at Andrew Carnegie's Edgar Thomson Steel Works. At trial, one witness, Peter Mullin, testified he saw Toth savagely beat Quinn at Furnace C, while two other witnesses testified that they saw Sabol and Rusnok savagely beat Quinn at Furnace A. The defendants' sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1892 because it was felt that the Hungarians, who spoke little English, had not received as impartial a trial as three Americans would have received. Sabol was pardoned in 1895 and Rusnok in 1897. It is not clear why Sabol was pardoned, but in granting Rusnok's pardon, the PA Board of Pardons felt that he had been mistaken for another man and that his alibi of not having been at the riot was correct. Toth was denied a pardon because of the direct testimony against him by witness Mullin.

Mullin's testimony became questionable when evidence surfaced that Furnace C, at which Mullin saw the beating, was 500 feet away from Furnace A where the other witnesses saw the beating. At trial it was presumed the furnaces were much closer to one another. Since Quinn was found, still alive, at Furnace A, he presumably was beaten there, and the witnesses' testimony indicated he was uninjured before being beaten, discounting two separate beatings. Thus, it seems probable that Mullin's testimony was fabricated. In addition, Mullin initially identified a man named Steve Toth rather than Andrew Toth as the man he saw beating Quinn. Andrew Toth and Steve Toth were unrelated. Steve Toth fled to Hungary, but confessed to the murder in Dec. 1910 shortly before his death. Pennsylvania Governor Tener granted Andrew Toth a full pardon in March 1911.  (CWC) (CTI)  [1/06]

Jerry Frank Townsend, who is mentally retarded, was arrested in 1979 for the rape of a pregnant Miami woman. During the investigation, he confessed to six murders. He was convicted in 1980 for the 1973 murders of Naomi Gamble and Barbara Brown in Broward County. In 1982, he pleaded guilty to two murders in Miami including the 1979 murder of 13-year-old Sonja Marion. He also pleaded no contest to two 1979 murders in Broward County. Including the original rape, Townsend received seven life terms.

In 1998, Sonja Marion's mother had a Fort Lauderdale police detective review the Townsend cases, and DNA testing cleared him of some crimes. In 2000, DNA evidence implicated Eddie Lee Mosley as did evidence from Frank Lee Smith's case. DNA evidence cast doubt on all of Townsend's confessions, and in 2001, he was cleared of all charges and released after being imprisoned for 22 years.  (IP)  [6/05]

Jonathan Charles Treadaway, Jr. was sentenced to death for the sodomy and murder of Brett Jordan, a 6-year-old boy. The prosecution presented a set of palm prints on a window of the boy's house that matched those of Treadaway. Treadaway admitted that he had looked in some windows the night of the boy's death, but denied that he had ever entered any house or touched any boy. The Arizona Supreme Court granted Treadaway a new trial based on the incompetence of his trial counsel, and at the new trial the defense called five pathologists who testified that there was no evidence that the boy had ever been raped or that he had died of anything but natural causes. Treadaway was acquitted and released in 1978.  (News Article) (77) (78)  [7/05]

(Federal Case) Kenneth Michael Trentadue, a prisoner at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center, was murdered by federal authorities. Trentadue was mistaken for Richard Guthrie, a second suspect in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. There is reason to believe Guthrie knew too much about FBI involvement with individuals directly involved in the bombing. This bombing, which occurred four months before Trentadue's death, killed 168 people and injured more than 680 others.
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Ralph Cooper, 24, Collis English, 23, McKinlay Forrest, 35, John McKenzie, 24, James Thorpe, 34, and Horace Wilson, 37, all blacks, were convicted by an all white jury of the murder of William Horner, an elderly white shopkeeper. All were sentenced to death. Horner died after being hit on the head with a soda bottle. Horner's wife, could not agree on how many men were actually involved with the attack, only that it was two to four light-skinned blacks in their teens.

Five of the six arrested signed inconsistent confessions, which were obtained by police coercion. All six had solid alibis and repudiated the confessions. The police refused to say whose fingerprints they found on the bottle. Some of the defendants were represented by NAACP attorneys, one of who was Thurgood Marshall, who later became a U.S. Supreme Court justice. During appeals of the convictions, trumped-up evidence was revealed and the Trenton medical examiner was found guilty of perjury. During a third trial in 1951, after an intervening mistrial, all defendants except English and Cooper were acquitted. The convictions of the latter two were overturned in 1952, and they were never retried. The Communist Daily Worker called the Trenton Six proceedings, “a northern Scottsboro case.”  (ISI)

William Troop - See Duval Three

Larry Troy - See Brown & Troy

Richard Trudel - See Cumberland Four

LAPD investigators induced Ruben Trujillo and Pedro Barrios Delvillar to confess to the same double murder and robbery. Yet, at the time of the murders, Trujillo was in the San Diego County Jail while Delvillar was in a California Youth Authority facility in Ventura.  [9/05]

Steven Murray Truscott was sentenced to death for the murder of his 12-year-old schoolmate, Lynn Harper. Harper disappeared near RCAF Clinton, an air force station, a few miles south of Clinton, Ontario. Truscott and Harper were 7th grade classmates at the same school. On the early evening of June 9, 1959, Truscott, then 14, gave Harper a ride on the crossbar of his bicycle from the vicinity of the school and the two traveled north along Country Road. Truscott maintained that he dropped her off unharmed at the intersection of Country Road and Highway 8. He said she told him she had squabbled with her parents and planned to hitch a ride somewhere. He said that after dropping her off he looked back and saw that a vehicle had stopped and that Harper was in the process of entering it. Harper's father reported her missing at 11:20 p.m. that evening.

Two days later Harper was found in a wooded lot off of Country Road. She had been raped and murdered. Within hours Truscott was arrested and charged with Harper's murder. At trial, all evidence against him was circumstantial and centered on placing Harper's death within a narrow time frame which implicated him. A pathologist testified that Harper died between 7:00 and 7:45 p.m. – an extremely precise determination even by today's forensic standards. Years later, the pathologist would amend his testimony and place Harper's death within a 12-hour time frame. Truscott was convicted and sentenced to hang, but four months later his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In 1966, Isabel LeBourdais rekindled interest in the case by publishing The Trial of Steven Truscott in which she argued that Truscott had been convicted of a crime he did not commit. In 1969, Truscott was released on parole and in 1974 the National Parole Board released him from the terms and conditions of his parole.

In 2000 interest in the case was again revived after a documentary on Truscott appeared on CBC's The Fifth Estate. Subsequently, journalist Julian Scher published a book on him entitled Until You Are Dead. Both of these sources suggested that significant evidence in favour of Truscott had been ignored at his trial. In 2001, lawyers filed an appeal to have the case reopened. In 2007, the Ontario Court of Appeal acquitted Truscott, and in 2008, Truscott was awarded $6.5 million for his wrongful conviction and imprisonment.  (CBC)  [7/08]

Earl Truvia - See Bright & Truvia

Charles Louis Tucker was sentenced to death for the murder of Mabel Page. Page was stabbed in Weston. More than 100,000 Massachusetts residents signed petitions requesting clemency when a trial witness confessed to perjury. Nevertheless, Tucker was executed in the electric chair on June 12, 1906.  (NODP) (Official Report)  [11/05]

Dianne Bell Tucker - See Choctaw Three

Wesley Ronald Tuley was tried for sexual assault after the 13-year-old daughter of his girlfriend claimed that he had molested her on a regular basis for more than a year. After a jury deadlocked on a verdict, Tuley pleaded guilty to the crime in exchange for a 10 year sentence of community supervision. He had run out of money to pay a lawyer for a second trial and he faced a long prison sentence if convicted at another trial. In addition, he had already spent 10 months in jail awaiting his first trial. More than two years later Tuley violated his community supervision with an unrelated offense and was sent to prison to serve the remainder of his 10 year sentence.

He later learned that his accuser had repeatedly recanted her story, both before and after the trial. She said she had created the story in anger at the way Tuley had treated her mother. Tuley won a hearing before the district judge who had presided over his trial. After hearing the new evidence, she ruled that it "unquestionably established" Tuley's innocence. Tuley was cleared in 2002.  (AP News) (Ex parte Tuley)  [7/05]

Thirty-eight defendants were convicted of selling and/or distributing cocaine in and around Tulia, TX based solely on the word of a Swisher County undercover sheriff's deputy named Tom Coleman. Texas Governor Rick Perry pardoned 35 of the Tulia defendants on August 22, 2003. In addition to the 38, eight other defendants were falsely arrested but were able to prove their innocence. One defendant, Yolanda Smith, had proof that she was making a bank deposit in Oklahoma City at the time she was allegedly hundreds of miles away selling cocaine to Tom Coleman.

In 2004 a lawsuit against the cities and counties belonging to the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force was settled, awarding $6 million to the 46 people arrested in Coleman's investigation. Coleman was convicted of perjury in 2005. At Coleman's trial, defense witness Swisher County Sheriff Larry Stewart forgot he was at a perjury trial and committed apparent perjury himself. The judge dismissed him as a witness and assigned him a defense lawyer to consult with.  (Justice: Denied) (CWC)  [9/05]

Keith E. Turner was convicted of a rape, because a victim identified him visually and by his voice. Turner had provided an alibi. DNA tests exonerated Turner in 2005.  (DMN) (IP)  [9/06]

Betty Tyson and John Duval, both blacks, were convicted by an all white jury of murdering Timothy Haworth, 52-year-old white businessman from Philadelphia. Tyson confessed after being handcuffed to a chair and beaten and kicked by police for 12 hours. A Rochester reporter found a jail counselor who reported her 1973 beating to his superiors the day after it occurred. No physical evidence linked Tyson to the crime, and her car tires were different than the killer's tire tracks. One of two teenage witnesses said police put a gun to his head and said they would kill him if he did not testify against her. Both witnesses were held as material witnesses in jail for seven months until her trial and threatened with being charged with murder if they did not perjure themselves. The detective who handled her case was convicted in 1980 of faking evidence in another case. Tyson and Duval were released in 1998 and 1999. Tyson was awarded $1.25 million.  (FJDB) (Justice: Denied)