Black man who was executed in Texas 70 years ago is cleared in case marked by racial bias

Juan A Lozano, Associated Press

Tommy Lee Walker was executed in the electric chair in May 1956 for the rape and murder of 31-year-old Venice Parker.

HOUSTON — 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.

But 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 review found problems with statements from a Dallas police officer who claimed that Parker had identified her attacker as a Black man. But multiple witnesses denied that Parker “did anything outside of convulse and hemorrhage exorbitant amounts of blood,” after being attacked, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot said during a Wednesday meeting of Dallas County commissioners that was held to ask the officials to declare Walker innocent.

During the next few months after Parker’s killing, hundreds of Black men were rounded up by authorities and four months later, Walker, then 19 years old, was arrested.

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Walker later testified he confessed to the killing because he was afraid for his life, Creuzot said.

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, Edward Lee Smith, at a local hospital, according to the Innocence Project.

“But this carried little weight in Jim Crow Dallas,” the Innocence Project said.

Walker was convicted by an all-white jury in 1954.

Learn about his exoneration. Dallas Public Library has other images of Walker’s trial.

False accusations like this have often led to lynchings and killings, like that of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin.

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