Tommy Lee Walker was executed in the electric chair in May 1956 for the rape and murder of 31-year-old Venice Parker.
Nearly 70 years after a Texas Black man was executed in a case that prosecutors now say was based on false evidence and was riddled with racial bias, officials have declared that he was innocent in the killing of a white woman in Dallas.
At the time of the trial, prosecutors had alleged Walker attacked Parker, a store clerk who was on her way home, on the evening of Sept. 30, 1953. Parker’s killing took place during a time of panic and racial division in the Dallas area as there were reports that a Peeping Tom believed to be a Black man was terrorizing women, according to the Dallas County Criminal District Attorney’s Office.
But an extensive review of Walker’s conviction by the Dallas County Criminal District Attorney’s Office, along with the help of the Innocence Project of New York and Northeastern University School of Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, found multiple problems with Walker’s case.
This work is very important. However, I can’t help but feel like the Innocence Project should be focusing as much of their limited resources as possible on people who are still alive and potentially unjustly on death row or imprisoned for life.
my very limited (I just stumbled across this article) understanding is less push back from the state over closed cases. It maybe also helps to establish precedent by overturning wrongful convictions and presenting evidence to the judge in current cases to give them pause before they condemn an innocent to death.