In 1954, Dallas County, Texas, police and prosecutors framed Tommy Lee Walker, a 19-year-old Black man, for the rape and murder of a White woman, Venice Lorraine Parker. Mr. Walker was convicted and sentenced to death in a sensationalized trial before an all-White jury. That jury credited the prosecution’s perjured testimony and racially inflammatory argument and ignored overwhelming evidence that Mr. Walker could not have killed Mrs. Parker because he was with a co-worker returning home from his job and then with his girlfriend as she gave birth to their child at the time of the murder. Texas wrongfully executed Mr. Walker in 1956.Â
Today, seventy years later, the Dallas County Commissioners Court posthumously exonerated Mr. Walker.
The exoneration of Tommy Lee Walker is a reminder of what we all know to be true but out of convenience and cowardice too frequently ignore: the death penalty is inherently, irremediably, and fatally flawed. As long as we give government the power to kill, it inevitably will use that power improperly. Not always, not universally, but too often, too indiscriminately, and too discriminatorily to justify having that power in the first place.
The wrongful execution of Tommy Lee Walker should remind us that now is the time for state-sanctioned executions to stop. It is time for the death penalty to end. Now and for all time.