Earl Washington Jr.

Last updated

Earl Washington Jr. (born May 3, 1960) is a former Virginia death-row inmate, who was fully exonerated of murder charges against him in 2000. He had been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the 1982 rape and murder of Rebecca Lyn Williams in Culpeper, Virginia. [1] Washington has an IQ estimated at 69, which classifies him as intellectually disabled. He was coerced into confessing to the crime when arrested on an unrelated charge a year later. He narrowly escaped being executed in 1985 and 1994.

Contents

Washington was scheduled for execution in September 1985 but a pro bono defense effort and appeal gained a stay while working to gain appeal of his conviction. Based on questions about his murder conviction raised in 1993 due to DNA testing, which had not been available at the time of trial, Washington's death sentence was commuted in 1994 by Governor Douglas Wilder to life imprisonment. In 2000 additional DNA testing was done, as new technology was available. Based on this, Washington was pardoned by Governor James Gilmore and released from prison. In 2006, he was awarded a settlement from the estate of Agent Curtis R. Wilmore, who had coerced Washington's confession. In 2007, he received a settlement from the state.

Background

In 1982, 19-year-old Rebecca Lynn Williams, mother of three, was raped and murdered in Culpeper, Virginia. In 1983 in neighboring Fauquier County, Virginia, Earl Washington Jr., a black man with a major intellectual disability, [2] was arrested for and admitted to breaking into the home of and wounding a neighbor during a drunken dispute. [2] [3] Subsequently, police coerced confessions from Washington for the rape/murder and three other sexual assaults. The other three charges were quickly disproven based on witness statements and physical evidence. The rape/murder case proceeded to trial based solely on the confession obtained after "days of police rehearsal and re-shaping" [4] through leading questions and Washington agreeing to detectives' corrections when he got details of the crime, including the victim's race, and of the crime scene wrong. [2] [5] [6]

With low-quality representation by defense counsel ⁠— ⁠his defense counsel had failed to discuss his intellectual disability as a mitigating factor during sentencing ⁠— ⁠Washington was convicted of Williams' capital murder and sentenced to death.

Review and appeals

After fellow death row inmate Joseph Giarratano took on his case in 1985, shortly before Washington's scheduled execution in September of that year, he noted the inmate's mental disability. [7] [8] Giarratano contacted Marie Deans, a volunteer advocate with whom he had worked, who enlisted pro bono help to gain a stay of execution. [8]

Washington's defense attorneys gained approval in 1993 to conduct an analysis of DNA evidence from the crime scene. This showed that Washington could not have made the semen stain and raised doubt that he was responsible for the crimes for which he was sentenced. [1] The appeals court refused to hear the case because Virginia has severe limitations on when new evidence can be introduced post-conviction. Nine days before Washington's rescheduled execution, Virginia's Governor Douglas Wilder commuted his sentence to life in prison. [3] [9]

In 2000, after more accurate DNA testing connected another man to the crime, Washington was exonerated, receiving a full pardon from Governor James Gilmore. [1] [3] Washington was represented by attorneys Robert T. Hall, Eric M. Freedman, Gerald Zerkin and Barry A. Weinstein. [7]

In 2006, Washington was awarded $2.25 million from the estate of Agent Curtis R. Wilmore who had coerced the false confession from the defendant. [10] [11] In 2007, Washington, the state of Virginia, and Wilmore's estate agreed to a settlement whereby Washington was to receive $1.9 million for wrongful conviction from the state. [9] [12]

In 2007, Kenneth Tinsley, who was already serving a life sentence and had been identified in a review of the state DNA database as matching DNA from the crime scene, pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of Rebeca Lyn Williams. [9] [10]

Aftermath

Since Washington's exoneration, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia (2002) that the death penalty for persons with intellectual disability was unconstitutional. It ordered states to review the cases of persons on death row who had been convicted and shown to have such disability, and to commute their sentences to appropriate lower levels of punishment. Washington's case is frequently cited by opponents of the death penalty as an example of a wrongful conviction and death sentence. He is an innocent man who was narrowly saved from being executed. [13] Jerry Givens, the executioner who had been scheduled to take Washington's life in 1985, cited this exoneration as a major factor in his conversion to anti-death penalty campaigner. [14]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Murnaghan, Ian, (28 December 2012) "Famous Trials and DNA Testing; Earl Washington Jr.", Explore DNA website, Retrieved 13 November 2014
  2. 1 2 3 Clines, Francis X. (September 7, 2000). "New DNA Tests Are Seen As Key to Virginia Case". The New York Times. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 Glod, Maria (August 23, 2006). "Va. Inmate Indicted in Killing That Altered DNA Testing Law". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  4. ↑ "Petition for Executive Pardon". PBS Frontline. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Earl Washington". Innocence Project. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  6. ↑ "Four Cases - Earl Washington". PBS Frontline. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  7. 1 2 Edds, Margaret (2006). An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington, Jr. New York and London: New York University Press. ISBN   978-0814722398.; a review of this book can also be found on the internet by Bearss, Sara. "Virginia Libraries v50n1 - Virginia Reviews". Archived from the original on 24 December 2013. Retrieved 19 November 2014.
  8. 1 2 Galuszka, Peter (May 1, 2018). "Free Man Walking". Style Weekly. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  9. 1 2 3 (June 2012) "Earl Washington" University of Michigan Law School, The National Registry of Exonorations, Retrieved 14 November 2014
  10. 1 2 McEvoy, Meg (April 17, 2007). "Man admits to 1982 rape and murder". c-ville. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  11. ↑ Jebb, John F. (2011). True Crime: Virginia: The State's Most Notorious Criminal Cases. Stackpole Books. ISBN   9780811745123.
  12. ↑ Glod, Maria (March 28, 2007). "Former Death-Row Inmate Would Get $1.9 Million". Pressreader. Retrieved February 2, 2019.
  13. ↑ Northup, Steven A. (20 July 2014) Death penalty is unfair and must be repealed Archived 2014-11-29 at the Wayback Machine , VADP, Retrieved 19 November 2014
  14. ↑ Smith, Harrison (April 19, 2020). "Jerry Givens, Virginia executioner turned death-penalty opponent, dies at 67 of coronavirus". The Washington Post . Washington D.C. Retrieved April 19, 2020.

Related Research Articles

Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that works to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and other forms of post-conviction relief, as well as advocate for criminal justice reform to prevent future injustice. The group cites various studies estimating that in the United States between 1% and 10% of all prisoners are innocent. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld who gained national attention in the mid-1990s as part of the "Dream Team" of lawyers who formed part of the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miscarriage of justice</span> Conviction of a person for a crime that they did not commit

A miscarriage of justice occurs when an unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.

Darryl Hunt was an African-American man from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who, in 1984, was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape and the murder of Deborah Sykes, a young white newspaper copy editor. After being convicted in that case, Hunt was tried in 1987 for the 1983 murder of Arthur Wilson, a 57-year-old black man of Winston-Salem. Both convictions were overturned on appeal in 1989. Hunt was tried again in the Wilson case in 1990; he was acquitted by an all-white jury. He was tried again on the Sykes charges in 1991; he was convicted.

Anthony Porter was a Chicago resident known for having been exonerated in 1999 of the murder in 1982 of two teenagers on the South Side of the city. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1983, and served 17 years on death row. He was exonerated following introduction of new evidence by Northwestern University professors and students from the Medill School of Journalism as part of their investigation for the school's Innocence Project. Porter's appeals had been repeatedly rejected, including by the US Supreme Court, and he was once 50 hours away from execution.

A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. When some degree of coercion is involved, studies have found that subjects with highly sophisticated intelligence or manipulated by their so-called "friends" are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, and have a significantly higher rate of false confessions than adults. Hundreds of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit—but years later, have been exonerated. It was not until several shocking false confession cases were publicized in the late 1980s, combined with the introduction of DNA evidence, that the extent of wrongful convictions began to emerge—and how often false confessions played a role in these.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Keith Coleman</span> American murderer

Roger Keith Coleman was an American convicted murderer and rapist who was executed on May 20, 1992, for the rape and murder of his 19-year-old sister-in-law, Wanda Faye McCoy, at her home in Grundy, Virginia on the night of March 10, 1981. A lifelong resident of Grundy, Coleman had worked as a coal miner.

Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is a former Maryland waterman and the first American sentenced to death to be exonerated post-conviction by DNA testing.

Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Opponents of capital punishment often cite cases of wrongful execution as arguments, while proponents argue that innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of the death penalty.

<i>The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town</i> 2006 true crime book by John Grisham

The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is a 2006 true crime book by John Grisham, his first nonfiction title. The book tells the story of Ronald 'Ron' Keith Williamson of Ada, Oklahoma, a former minor league baseball player who was wrongly convicted in 1988 of the rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter in Ada and was sentenced to death. After serving 11 years on death row, he was exonerated by DNA evidence and other material introduced by the Innocence Project and was released in 1999.

Exoneration occurs when the conviction for a crime is reversed, either through demonstration of innocence, a flaw in the conviction, or otherwise. Attempts to exonerate individuals are particularly controversial in death penalty cases, especially where new evidence is put forth after the execution has taken place. The transitive verb, "to exonerate" can also mean to informally absolve one from blame.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.

Joseph M. Giarratano was an American murderer and prisoner who served in Deerfield Correctional Center in Southampton County, Virginia, and was on death row until having his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. On November 21, 2017, he was granted parole. He was convicted, based on circumstantial evidence and his own confessions, of murdering Toni Kline and raping and strangling her 15-year-old daughter Michelle on February 4, 1979, in Norfolk, Virginia. He had said that he was an addict for years and had blacked out on alcohol and drugs, waking to find the bodies. He was sentenced to death, and incarcerated on death row for 12 years at the former Virginia State Penitentiary.

The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.

In United States federal criminal law, the Innocence Protection Act is the first federal death penalty reform to be enacted. The Act seeks to ensure the fair administration of the death penalty and minimize the risk of executing innocent people. The Innocence Protection Act of 2001, introduced in the Senate as S. 486 and the House of Representatives as H.R. 912, was included as Title IV of the omnibus Justice for All Act of 2004, signed into law on October 30, 2004 by President George W. Bush as public law no. 108-405.

The Illinois Innocence Project, a member of the national Innocence Project network, is a non-profit legal organization that works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people and reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie Deans</span>

Susan Marie Deans was an American anti-death penalty activist who was committed to finding attorneys for men who were facing execution without legal representation. Marie's work began on death row began in South Carolina in the early 1980s and continued in Virginia for the next twenty years where she won reduced sentences for over 200 death-row inmates in Virginia and South Carolina. A memoir of Deans' life and work, titled A Courageous Fool: Marie Deans and Her Struggle Against the Death Penalty, was released in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Clutter</span> American wrongful conviction advocate

Bill Clutter is an American private investigator, wrongful conviction advocate, and author. He is the co-founder of the Illinois Innocence Project and founder of the national wrongful conviction organization Investigating Innocence. His work on the Donaldson v. Central Illinois Public Service Company case led him to write the book Coal Tar: How Corrupt Politics and Corporate Greed Are Killing America's Children, which is the story of an epidemic of neuroblastoma in Taylorville, Illinois, caused by exposure to coal tar.

Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown are two African American men who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for a murder they did not commit.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.