Black man executed by electric chair in 1956 declared innocent after review

A 70-year-old execution of a Black male, based on racial bias, has raised fresh concerns about America’s judicial system.

Tommy Lee Walker has been declared innocent following a thorough review of his case, almost seven decades after his execution by electric chair in May 1956 in a case pertaining to rape and killing of a white woman.

Venice Parker, 31 at the time, was killed on her way home on the evening of September 30, 1953. Police rounded up several suspects, mostly Black, at a time marked by deep racial divisions in the Dallas area.

Walker, 19 at the time, was taken into custody four months after the killing.

In a meeting on Wednesday, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot said that a white police officer named Will Fritz, who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, used coercive interrogation tactics and Walker confessed to the killing because he was afraid for his life.

The review found problems with Fritz’s statements which claimed the woman had identified her attacker; however, multiple witness accounts suggested that she never identified her attacker.

Ten witnesses presented by Walker’s lawyers confirmed that on the evening of the killing they were with Walker and his girlfriend when she gave birth to their son.

Despite all the evidence suggesting against it, an all-white jury convicted Walker in 1954.

Walker has now been posthumously exonerated.

The case was reviewed with the help of the Innocence Project of New York and Northeastern University School of Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project.