Nearly 70 years after he was executed for a crime he did not commit, Tommy Lee Walker, a Black teenager sent to death row by an all-white jury in Jim Crow–era Dallas, has been formally exonerated.
On Jan. 21, 2026, Dallas County commissioners unanimously approved a resolution clearing Walker’s name, acknowledging that his arrest, prosecution, and conviction were driven by coerced evidence, racial bias, and grave violations of his constitutional rights.
Walker was just 19 years old in September 1953 when he was arrested and later charged with the rape and murder of Venice Parker, a 31-year-old white store clerk who was attacked several miles from Walker’s home. Despite multiple witnesses placing Walker elsewhere that night — including at the bedside of his pregnant girlfriend, who gave birth to their son hours later — prosecutors moved forward with the case…