Ledell Lee, a black man in Arkansas, was executed in April 2017 for the murder of Debra Reese in 1993. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene, only some eyewitnesses who saw him enter her house and leave 20 minutes later.
Now, four years later, his family successfully petitioned to have DNA found on the murder weapon tested...and it wasn't his.
Before he was executed by the state of Arkansas in April 2017, Lee gave some of his last words to the BBC, telling the broadcaster, "My dying words will always be, as it has been: I am an innocent man."
Now, four years after Lee was put to death for the 1993 murder of Debra Reese, attorneys for his family say someone else's DNA was found on the murder weapon, raising new questions about Lee's conviction.
The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, where a 5-4 decision ultimately allowed Arkansas to proceed with his execution, even with appeals pending. Why? Because their poison was about to expire.
Lee, who was Black, was executed on April 20, 2017-- the first death row inmate executed in the state in more than a decade, and the first in a series of executions carried out before the state's supply of lethal injection drugs expired at the end of the month.
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"The reasoning given by the judge was it wouldn't matter, that there were three people who saw him at or near that neighborhood on that day and time and honestly the DNA just wouldn't matter," Short said.
Short said the looming expiration date could have played a role in not having the DNA tested. If the state were to halt proceeding with the execution while the DNA was tested, he said, the lethal injection drugs would be expired by the time the results had been received.
Sounds terrible, right? But there’s more. From wiki:
Lee had also filed a motion in federal court asking the court to reopen his federal case due to issues with his first counsel, particularly the failure of counsel to bring evidence of his intellectual disability . Lee wanted to present new evidence showing that he had fetal alcohol syndrome, significant brain damage, and intellectual disability
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During the hearing, Lee's attorney Lee Short made the case that prior counsel in the Reese case failed Lee by not insisting on modern DNA testing of the items prior to that time.
And more
Additionally, Lee was tried by a judge who concealed his own conflict of interest: an affair with the assistant prosecutor, to whom the judge was later married. Mr. Lee's first state post-conviction counsel introduced the evidence of the affair by calling the judge's ex-wife, who testified about the affair after opposing the subpoena. That lawyer, however, was so intoxicated at the hearing that the state moved for him to be drug tested after he slurred, stumbled, and made incoherent arguments. The inebriated lawyer also represented Lee briefly in federal court, where he raised the important claim that Lee was ineligible for execution because of intellectual disability. Lee won new proceedings because of the lawyer's drunkenness, though his representation did not improve afterward. His next lawyers failed to introduce evidence of the affair, giving up one of many of Lee's important arguments, and never pursued his innocence or intellectual disability claims.
So….no physical evidence, except the evidence that wasn’t allowed to be tested, because testing the DNA would take too long and the midazolam would expire, and since Europe isn’t sending us anymore to kill people with, they expedited several death row cases to make sure they could kill people in time...AND he was allegedly brain damage which should have made him ineligible for a death sentence...AND he was tried by a judge who was sleeping with the prosecutor...AND he had truly inept representation (as a poor black man). Maybe he did it, maybe he didn’t. It’s supposed to be, beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s supposed to be liberty and justice for all. This clearly wasn’t justice.
As long as poor black people have a different legal system than the rich and/or white, the death penalty is an abomination and should be suspended indefinitely, nation-wide.