From NBC News: 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.
Tommy Lee Walker was executed in the electric chair in May 1956 for the rape and murder of 31-year-old Venice Parker.
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.
A review of Walker’s conviction found multiple problems. They identified problematic evidence, including the statements of a Dallas police officer who said that Parker identified her attacker as a Black man. Multiple witnesses said Parker did not speak. In fact, she did nothing “outside of convulse and hemorrhage exorbitant amounts of blood,” after being attacked, said Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot.
After Parker’s killing, hundreds of Black men were questioned. Four months later, 19-year-old Walker was arrested and “subjected to threatening and coercive interrogation tactics by Will Fritz, a Dallas police captain who had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan,” Creuzot told a panel reviewing the conviction, NBC News reports.
Although he confessed to the killing, Walker said he’d been afraid for his life, Creuzot said.
10 witnesses testified at his trial that they were with Walker and his girlfriend as she gave birth to their son, Edward Lee Smith, at the time of the murder, according to the Innocence Project.
“But this carried little weight in Jim Crow Dallas,” the group said.
An all-white jury convicted Walker in 1954.
“The prosecution in this case presented misleading and inadmissible evidence,” Creuzot said. “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.”
Tommy Lee Walker was declared “innocent” by a Dallas court on Wednesday, 70 years after he was executed for the rape and murder of Venice Parker. The court said his 1954 conviction and 1956 execution were “profound miscarriage[s] of justice.” https://t.co/WUtJdD72bg pic.twitter.com/7gfml3V20R
— ABC News (@ABC) January 23, 2026
Read more at NBC News
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