Criminal Justice & Wrongful Convictions

Dallas County, Texas has formally exonerated Tommy Lee Walker, a Black man executed in 1956 at age 21 for the rape and murder of a White woman, after the district attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit concluded he was innocent. DA John Creuzot asked county commissioners to pass a resolution acknowledging that Walker’s confession was coerced after hours of interrogation without a lawyer, he was convicted by an all‑White jury, and no evidence beyond that recanted confession linked him to the 1953 killing of Venice Lorraine Parker. The review found police questioned hundreds of Black men based solely on race, relied on a single officer’s claim that the mortally wounded victim had identified a Black attacker despite other witnesses saying she could not speak, and allowed the original prosecutor to testify as a "witness" vouching for Walker’s guilt. Walker maintained his innocence through sentencing and was executed in the electric chair; his son, now 72, pressed the Innocence Project and DA’s office to revisit the case and told commissioners the exoneration "means the world" to him and his late mother. The case adds to a growing body of evidence about wrongful convictions and racially biased capital prosecutions in the Jim Crow and early civil‑rights era, ammunition for current debates over the death penalty and the need for independent review of older convictions.