Seventy years after he was sent to the electric chair, Tommy Lee Walker has officially been cleared of the crime that cost him his life.
On January 21, Dallas County commissioners in Texas unanimously approved a resolution exonerating Walker, a 19-year-old Black man who was executed in 1956 for the rape and murder of Venice Parker, a white store clerk.
According to The Innocence Project, a modern review concluded that Walker’s arrest, prosecution, and conviction were shaped by unreliable evidence, coercive interrogation tactics, and racial bias.
Walker was accused after Parker was attacked while waiting for a bus in September 1953. She had been stabbed and sexually assaulted and later died from her injuries.
Police claimed that, moments before her death, Parker identified her attacker as a Black man—despite witnesses saying she was unable to speak because her throat had been slit. No physical evidence tied Walker to the crime.
At the time of the attack, Walker was miles away, spending the night with his pregnant girlfriend, Mary Louise Smith, who went into labor. Their son was born in the early hours of the next morning. Ten witnesses testified at trial that Walker was present for the birth.
That alibi didn’t stop authorities from focusing on Walker months later amid intense public pressure to solve the case. He was interrogated for hours by homicide chief Will Fritz and prosecutors under then–District Attorney Henry Wade.
Walker eventually signed two written statements after being threatened with execution and told police had evidence that didn’t exist. He recanted one almost immediately. He never confessed to rape.
“We now know that threats of the death penalty, isolation, and deception place people at significant risk of falsely confessing,” said Lauren Gottesman, an attorney representing Walker’s family.
The case went before an all-white jury. Prosecutors withheld evidence, relied on shaky eyewitness accounts, and Wade even took the stand to declare his personal belief that Walker was guilty. Walker was convicted and executed at age 21.
A reinvestigation by the Dallas County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, the Innocence Project, and Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project uncovered extensive misconduct. The review also tied Walker’s case to a broader pattern of wrongful convictions during Wade’s tenure.
For Walker’s son, Edward Smith — the child who was born the night his father was accused of the crime he didn't commit, and that cost him his life — the ruling brought long-delayed recognition.
“This won’t bring him back,” Smith said, “but now the world knows what we always knew — that he was an innocent man.”