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.
Besides the obvious conclusions, this case also shows how (state sanctioned) racism makes everyone less secure. The real perpetrator has not been caught and operated under conditions that minimized his risks for actual consequences. Maybe he wouldn’t have killed Venice Parker if there had been a greater risk of discovery. So racism killed two people in that case.