Wrongfully Executed in 1956, Tommy Lee Walker May Finally Be Cleared
Tommy Lee Walker was wrongfully executed in 1956. Now, the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court is set to grant him a symbolic exoneration.
This article contains details of murder, and of racial violence.
Tommy Lee Walker was 19 years old when his life changed forever. On September 30, 1953, 31-year-old Venice Parker was raped and murdered near Love Field in Northwest Dallas. Parker had been walking to a bus stop at the time of her attack. Around 9 p.m. that evening, an airline reservation clerk saw Parker struggling in the middle of the road and pulled over. He helped the young mother into the backseat of his car and sped off toward Love Field to find help. The man reportedly told police officers at the airport that the only thing Parker had said to him when he found her covered in blood was, “I was stabbed.” This is where accounts differ, and where Walker’s life began to irrevocably fracture.
Patrol Office J.W. Gallaher assisted the man and Parker when they arrived at Love Field. The police officer claimed that when he went to check on Parker in the back seat of the car, she said to him, “A Negro took me under the bridge and cut my throat.” The Dallas Police Department and District Attorney Henry Wade took Gallaher at his word, even though the man who originally found Parker said she was unable to speak during the drive back to Love Field because her throat had been slashed by her attacker. He said that after she told him she had been stabbed, she was only able to make gurgling sounds from that point on.
Despite this, Wade and the Dallas Police Department decided to bring dozens of Black men in for questioning. John Wiley Price, the Dallas County Commissioner, said, “It’s not difficult to fathom what happened; they grabbed the first ‘Negro’ they saw.” Racism was extremely prevalent in the city at the time—“The Klan was basically rampant here,” Price told CBS News—and thus innocent Black men were wrongfully rounded up over a period of several months and questioned about Parker’s attack. Tommy Lee Walker became one of those men approximately four months after Parker’s murder. After hours of intensive, threatening questioning by the Dallas Police Department (and after Walker witnessed jail officers beating a Black inmate), Walker was coerced into confessing to a crime he was not actually able to commit. He quickly recanted his confession, but at that point, it was too late.
Walker lived close to Baylor Hospital in September 1953. His neighborhood was around five miles away from Love Field, and he didn’t have a car, instead relying on friends for rides to and from work. He did not have a criminal record. There was no physical evidence tying him to Parker’s murder, and no witnesses placing him at the scene of the crime. In fact, nine witnesses came forward confirming Walker’s alibi for September 30, including hospital workers who were with Walker and his pregnant girlfriend, Mary Louise Smith, who went into labor a few hours after Parker had been killed.
Numerous witnesses confirmed Walker’s alibi, but he was convicted anyway
Every aspect of Tommy Lee Walker’s story is tragic, but John Wiley Price told CBS News that “the real travesty” of what happened back in 1953 was that “Mr. Walker had an alibi” on the night of Venice Parker’s murder. Nine individuals confirmed Walker’s whereabouts on September 30. A friend picked him up around 6 p.m. and drove him to Exall Park, where Walker met up with some of his friends, who dubbed themselves the Street Lamp Quartet, because they’d often sing doo wop songs together in the park. He was with them until about 11 p.m., when he went home for a brief period before his pregnant girlfriend, Mary Louise Smith, went into labor and they took an ambulance to the hospital. She gave birth to their son the following day.
Parker had been attacked before 9 p.m. and died shortly thereafter. Walker would still have been in the park with his friends at that time. He would not have been able to attack Parker and then make the five-mile journey back to Exall Park on foot. Police officers and District Attorney Henry Wade didn’t seem to care about this. They pushed Walker’s false confession and charged him with the crime. In 1956, the case was heard before an all-white jury. Those nine witnesses confirmed Walker’s alibi for the jury, but it didn’t matter. He was convicted of Parker’s murder, and the judge presiding over the hearing sentenced Walker to death by electric chair. He was 21 years old.
After receiving his sentence, Walker proclaimed his innocence to the judge and jury. “I feel that I have been tricked out of my life. There’s a lot of other people who have been convicted for crimes they committed and was turned loose. I haven’t did anything, and I’m not being turned loose,” he said. Price told CBS News that “The last thing [Walker] said before he was executed was, ‘I’m innocent.'” 5,000 people attended the young man’s funeral. Now, 70 years later, the city of Dallas is taking a symbolic step toward providing Walker with the justice he should have received all along.
A symbolic exoneration is being considered by the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court
Today, January 20, the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court will be presented with evidence to pass a resolution to symbolically exonerate Tommy Lee Walker. The resolution states that the exoneration is warranted due to “his arrest without probable cause, his interrogation without the assistance of counsel, the denial of a jury representative of his peers, the suppression and misrepresentation of material evidence, and the use of a confession now recognized as unreliable under modern scientific and legal standards.” It also notes that his conviction for Venice Parker’s murder happened “during a period in Dallas and throughout the United States marked by racial segregation, systemic injustice, and inequality’ within the criminal justice system.”
Walker’s 72-year-old son planned to be there to hear the Dallas County Commissioners’ Court’s decision. John Wiley Price said of the symbolic exoneration, “We think it’s appropriate; we may be the first court in the country to do this. Of course, the community wants this. You can’t move on until you heal that sore that you know is out there.” As of writing, official confirmation of whether the resolution has passed has not been announced, though an update is forthcoming.
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