Texas posthumously declares Tommy Lee Walker, executed 70 years ago, innocent
19-year-old Tommy Lee Walker was charged with the rape and murder of a white woman on September 30, 1953—despite numerous witnesses who provided him with an alibi. An all-white jury sentenced Walker to death.
Before he was executed in the electric chair on May 12, 1956, at the age of only 21, he used his last words to proclaim his innocence. Seventy years later, on January 21, 2026, Dallas County authorities officially exonerated Tommy Lee Walker in a historic resolution.
The resolution acknowledges that “Mr. Walker’s arrest, interrogation, prosecution, and conviction were tainted by false or unreliable evidence, coercive interrogation methods, and racial prejudice, constituting grave violations of Mr. Walker’s constitutional rights.”
The head of the homicide division, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, interrogated Walker for hours without a lawyer and told him that the police had evidence of his guilt and that he would face the death penalty if he did not confess. Walker signed a confession but recanted it almost immediately. There was no other evidence against him.
The prosecutor had systematically excluded non-white jurors, withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense, and made provocative statements—for example, when he told the jury in his closing argument that he wanted to “flip the switch” on Walker himself.
An internal memo that surfaced years later revealed that the prosecutor had instructed his colleagues to exclude “Jews, Negroes, Mexicans, or members of a minority” from the jury. Relevant data shows that Walker is at least the 35th person to be charged by the same prosecutor and later acquitted.
One of those present at Tommy Lee Walker’s posthumous exoneration was his son, Ted Smith. “I am 72 years old and I still miss my father,” he said through tears. The hearing was also attended by the 77-year-old son of the victim, who was only four years old when his mother was killed. The two men embraced, and Smith said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”