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, according to the Innocence Project and Dallas Observer.
During the next few months after the killing, hundreds of Black men were rounded up by authorities and four months later, Walker, then 19 years old, was arrested. He was executed less than three years later.
Walker was subjected to threatening and coercive interrogation tactics by Will Fritz, a Dallas police captain who had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
At his trial, Walker’s lawyers presented 10 witnesses who testified that at the time of the murder, they were with Walker and his girlfriend when she gave birth to their son. Walker was convicted by an all-white jury in 1954.
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.
“The prosecution in this case presented misleading and inadmissible evidence,” Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot said during a Wednesday meeting of Dallas County commissioners. “This case, while it has undeniable legal errors, was riddled with racial injustice during a time when prejudice and bigotry were woven throughout every aspect of society, including the criminal justice system.”
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