By David Protess
August 16, 2009
Forty-one-year-old Willie T. Donald, known as #923457 to his keepers and "Timmy" to his family and growing legion of supporters, has been incarcerated since 1992 for a crime spree in Gary that included armed robbery and murder. His conviction, at age 24, was based entirely on the testimony of two eyewitnesses, both victimized by the assailant in separate incidents on the same night.
But he didn't do it.
A two-year investigation by six teams of Medill students unearthed the following findings:
**The state buried handwritten notes by the lead prosecutor in 1992 stating that one of the eyewitnesses told him she "can't swear in court" that Timmy was the assailant. Nonetheless, the prosecutor allegedly pressured her into testifying at the trial. The prosecutor's notes finally surfaced after Medill students began investigating the case.
**The defense failed to call another witness, an off-duty Gary police officer, who was robbed by the same assailant that night but did not identify Timmy in a line-up viewed by the other witnesses. The officer told Medill students that she got a close look at the perpetrator, and his distinctive features led her to rule out Timmy at the line-up. Instead of realizing they had the wrong man, prosecutors simply didn't charge Timmy with this robbery - or other similar crimes that night in which the victims also ruled out Timmy.
**A Gary police detective determined that Timmy was at his full-time job when a witness saw the assailant outside her home four days after he had robbed her. Prosecutors also withheld this evidence from the defense.
**A drug addict named Lavelle Thompson, who matched the description provided by the eyewitnesses, was likely responsible for the crime spree. Thompson himself was gunned down by drug dealers several days later.
**The jacket worn by the murder victim was located by Medill students in a sealed evidence bag, allowing for possible DNA testing of any hair or blood left by the perpetrator. The students obtained hair samples from Lavelle Thompson's sister and a saliva sample from Timmy to facilitate mitochondrial and other forensic analysis.
On August 5, 2009, Timmy's pro bono lawyer, Thomas Vanes, filed a petition requesting a Lake County, IN magistrate to authorize the DNA tests. The petition included a summary of the newly discovered evidence of Timmy's innocence. Among the new evidence in Vanes' filing was an affidavit by eyewitness Rhonda Fleming (formerly Williams) recanting her trial testimony.
In the affidavit, obtained by Sergio Serritella, the Project's teaching assistant, Fleming described how she and the other witness had come to identify Timmy in the first place:
Put in the same room, at the same time, in the Gary police department, the two witnesses were browsing through books of mug shots. "When I saw the photo of Willie T. Donald," Fleming recounted, "I said to [the other witness] that this might be the perpetrator. [She] agreed there was a resemblance, but neither of us was sure. The mug shot simply looked more like the perpetrator than the other pictures we had seen."
Fleming went on to swear that she later selected Timmy from the line-up only because she had already chosen his photo "and not because he looked just like the man who had robbed me." In fact, consistent with what she had told the lead prosecutor seventeen years earlier, Fleming now swore that "Mr. Donald was taller and had a larger build than the man who had robbed me." She said she was "never more than 50 percent sure" -- the flip of a coin -- that Timmy was the perpetrator. But she still testified against him at the trial because she was "pressured and intimidated by the prosecutor."
"I deeply regret that I allowed myself to be bullied into identifying Willie T. Donald...." Fleming's affidavit concluded.
David Protess and Timmy Donald review the newly discovered evidence of his innocence
at the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, IN.
When told of the recantation in a recent interview, Timmy said he accepted Fleming's apology. "I forgive her," he said tearfully. Timmy added that he was praying for the other witnesses' children, whose father was murdered in the crime spree, and for the witness herself, who continues to believe that Timmy was the assailant.
In the interview, Timmy pointed out the irony that his picture was even in a book of mug shots: It was taken when he was arrested years earlier for sitting in a car that had been stolen by a friend. Timmy was not prosecuted for the alleged offense, and had no criminal record or history of violence prior to his wrongful conviction in 1992.
On the front page of today's Northwest Times of Indiana, investigative reporter Sarah Tompkins - an alum of Medill and the Project - exposed the injustice in a story headlined, "Jailed for murder, Gary man fights to prove he is innocent".
Timmy's case will be back in court on March 12, 2010.
Will New Science Crack Old Case? MT-DNA Testing Underway on Evidence Discovered by Medill Innocence Project Students
By David Protess
Updated January 24, 2010
An air of anticipation filled cozy Fisk Hall 308 on the Evanston campus of Northwestern University as Sergio Serritella, my teaching assistant, and I entered at 3:00 p.m. on a blustery Monday in February of 2008.
Five Medill seniors who had been investigating the case of Willie (“Timmy”) Donald for months greeted us with broad smiles. They were early. Clearly, something was up.
“We found the jacket,” said one student, still standing at the right side of the rectangular conference table that occupied most of the room.
Quizzical looks came from the front of the conference table.
“You know, the one Bernard Jimenez was wearing the night he was murdered,” he explained. “It’s been sealed all these years in an evidence room in the clerk’s office.”
Sergio and I exchanged glances, then simultaneously exclaimed, “Mitochondrial!”
Quizzical looks now came from the sides of the conference table as the students slid into their seats.
A brief lecture followed. Mitochondrial DNA (mt-DNA) analysis was the latest rage in forensic science, testing hair found at crimes scenes to help convict or exonerate suspects. Mitochondria, the energy boosters outside the nuclei of cells, were extracted from the hair, identifying genetic patterns that could be compared with those of a suspect.
Team Donald immediately appreciated the implications for their case. The murder victim had been in a violent struggle with his assailant shortly before being shot to death. Perhaps hair shed during that struggle could be recovered from the sealed jacket and compared with Timmy’s.
“Better yet,” I interjected. “The hair could be compared with a female relative of Lavelle,” referring to the prime alternative suspect in the case, Lavelle Thompson, who was deceased.
Since distinctive mitochondrial patterns are inherited entirely from the maternal side of a family, we only would need hair samples from Thompson’s mother or sisters to determine if his genetic fingerprint had been left at the scene.
But how would we get their cooperation?
A subsequent Team Donald, using “the moral appeal,” convinced Latonya Thompson, Lavelle’s sister, to offer up her hair for the cause. Relishing the thought of determining whether her late brother had been a killer, or an innocent man, and wanting to help Timmy Donald if the former proved true, took a scissors and sliced a chunk of her hair – much more than was needed for the sensitive mt-DNA test.
Next, the student-journalists apprehensively approached Timmy on a prison visit and asked if he would provide hair and saliva samples, wondering if a sign of reluctance would betray his guilt.
“Timmy didn’t hesitate,” a student gleefully reported after returning to campus from the Miami Correctional Facility in central Indiana. “But we did face a big problem – he’d gotten a buzz cut a few days ago.”
Clipping stubble from what little hair was left, and swabbing his cheek for an additional source of DNA, we now were getting closer to the testing. But the most difficult task remained: finding hair from the Jimenez jacket. And not just any hair. Since the killer had indisputably been African-American, we needed to find hair with “Negroid” traits to distinguish it from hair that might have been shed by the mostly Caucasian personnel who had processed the scene and removed the jacket.
Vacuuming hair from the unsealed jacket would require painstaking labor by the state police crime lab – and the cooperation of prosecutors. With the Medill Innocence Project at war with Cook County prosecutors over the Anthony McKinney case, my students and I wondered how the Lake County, Indiana D.A.’s Office would react to a request for post-conviction DNA testing, which they could oppose.
The response was swift, and refreshing. As long as the tapped-out County did not have to pick up the tab, the tests were fine with prosecutors. With the approval of both the state and defense, the Jimenez jacket was shipped to the government’s crime lab for the sole purpose of locating hairs. “Let’s worry first about finding Negroid hairs,” I told Tom Vanes, Timmy’s pro bono lawyer. “We can worry later about paying for the DNA tests.”
The next month would seem like an eternity. Timmy Donald was less than optimistic. “A dark cloud has been hanging over my head,” he wrote to me. “They won’t find anything because it would force them to admit their mistake in convicting me.” A version of what would become known as the “gloom and doom” letter was circulating among the growing number of Team Donald alums, who began expressing concern over Timmy’s emotional state. (Contributing to his low mood was the latest collapse of his beloved Chicago Cubs, whose own dark cloud was hovering near the century mark in the summer of 2009.)
It seemed that Timmy’s negative outlook had begun to infect everyone – except, as it turned out, the scientists who worked for the state police. First to get the news was Tom Vanes. “They found five hairs with Negroid traits. Some hairs had root material. TV” Timmy’s lawyer wrote in a brief e-mail message to me, reflecting the steady, understated hand he had possessed throughout the case.
The reaction to the news on the Team Donald alumni listserv was less subdued. “So when will Timmy finally be free?” wrote one former student. “Let’s get him out of there!” wrote another.
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"I want the evidence to reveal the true story of what happened." |
There was, indeed, cause for celebration. Five hairs were five better than none, and the presence of “root material” indicated the hairs could have been dislodged in a violent struggle. (Partial hair shafts, in contrast, can naturally fall from one’s head simply by bending over.)
Nonetheless, several issues remained. First, we needed a lab capable of conducting the highly complicated mt-DNA procedure. Second, we needed funds to pay for the tests. And third, we needed nothing short of Divine intervention that a seventeen-year-old jacket (with a Chicago Cubs logo, no less) ripped from the body of a murder victim would contain hairs that implicated a deceased alternative suspect in the crime.
The first issue would not be resolved as simply as it seemed. Timmy Donald weighed in again, this time with a mass mailing to his Medill pen pals expressing “grave doubts” about the legitimacy of any lab that would test the evidence. “How can we be sure they won’t rig the test?” he wrote me. “They railroaded me seventeen years ago. Why not again?”
This was not an uncommon refrain from innocent prisoners, and I never have viewed their fears as paranoia – because someone in fact had been out to get them. To alleviate Timmy’s concerns, and to find the best lab in the country for mt-DNA testing, I turned to two old friends: Barry Scheck, the co-director of the Innocence Project in New York City, and Rob Warden, the executive director of our law school's Center on Wrongful Convictions.
Both experts in DNA testing made the same recommendation: Mitotyping Technologies in College Park, Pennsylvania. Dr. Terry Melton, a forensic scientist at Mytotyping, seemed to relish the challenge. And it became clear from our e-mail exchanges that she had forgotten more about arcane DNA testing than I ever remembered.
With the samples in good hands, and the prisoner mollified, the issue became money. It would cost roughly $15,000 (gasp) to test all the evidence. The state didn’t have it. The defense didn’t have it. The Donald family didn’t have it. The Medill Innocence Project had just enough to test a hair or two, but not more.
It seemed unthinkable that a prisoner’s fate might depend on procuring several thousand dollars less than it cost to house him each year in a penitentiary for a crime he did not commit.
As I began thinking about a fundraising campaign – “Free Willie,” an alum dubbed it – fate intervened. Shortly before Christmas, an anonymous donor sent us $25,000, and the Alphawood Foundation, long a supporter of the Project, came through again. This time, they increased their donation and included funds earmarked for DNA testing.
“We stand behind the Medill Innocence Project and have not wavered in our support,” wrote Laura Samson, Alphawood’s executive director, in a thinly veiled comment on the attack by Cook County prosecutors. (My comment on the recent donations: “Thank you, State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, for helping us find the resources to support an innocent prisoner from your next door neighbor in Gary.”)
What’s next? This week, Team Donaldites Chris Danzig and Sarah Simpson will take time from their lives after college to make the 167 mile trek to the Miami Correctional Center to get a fresh swab of saliva from Timmy’s cheek. Sergio Serritella will arrange for the sample to be sent to Mytopying. And then we wait.
It should take about a month to complete all the tests. The odds of a “hit” are a long shot, at best, and the Dark Cloud is not far from our minds. So, as we wait, some of us turn to Divine intervention, and all of us remember that Timmy Donald has waited for justice many more years than we have. Almost as long, in fact, as the current crop of Medill seniors are old.
For more on this development, see today's front page story in the Northwest Indiana Times: "Evidence shipped in Donald case, MTDNA testing sought to determine innocence".
| Medill alums who investigated the case for the Project reflect on their reporting - and on the wrongfully convicted man whose cause they have embraced: | |
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"Innocent. Our justice system claims that everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but when the proving is inherently flawed a person can spend 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Such is the case of Willie T. Donald, a man we have come to know as Timmy. Over the course of our reporting - traversing the Midwest in the winter of 2008 - I came to firmly believe in Timmy’s innocence. After reading all of the documents on the case, I was incredulous that a man had been convicted of murder on such flimsy evidence. "A look at the facts shows us this: an absence of inculpatory physical evidence, no motive or criminal history, no confession of guilt, a solid alibi, and a strong alternate suspect. The recent recantation confirms erroneous eyewitness accounts – an element of the case that led to the conviction in the first place. That the state continues to imprison Timmy is a grave injustice. Timmy won’t get back the years he’s lost, but he should walk out an innocent man." |
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"When I was introduced to Timmy's case on the first day of class, I began questioning his guilt because a veteran of the Gary Police Force, Mary Banks, was unable to ID him despite a face-to-face conversation with her assailant. I couldn’t help but be puzzled how Timmy could possibly have committed these crimes when someone trained to identify criminals ruled him out of the line-up she saw. "Once I started working on Timmy’s case, there were a few more moments that brought me closer to the complete confidence that I have today of his innocence. One of them was the first time I met Sgt. John Jelks of the Gary PD. It has been nearly two decades since Sgt. Jelks helped investigate the case, and it was clear that he is still disturbed that a man he was sure was innocent remained behind bars. After interviewing Rhonda Williams, John tried to convince his superiors that Timmy should not be considered a suspect. While he was unable to do so, he continued to fight for Timmy’s freedom seventeen years later. For a police officer to have that type of dedication to an old case, it is obvious that there is an incredible amount of evidence that proves Timmy’s innocence. "We always knew that Timmy had a clean past. He had pursued school, had a steady job, and had no trouble with the law. It never made sense for him to be robbing people at gunpoint. When I learned about Lavelle Thompson from his sisters, the image of someone who could have committed these crimes appeared. His own sisters, despite trying to protect his honor seventeen years after his death, had no choice to admit that he was a troublemaker. Sitting in his mother's living room and looking at pictures of him, I saw someone who matched the description provided by the victims much better than Timmy did. I also learned that he had been tipped that members of a notorious Gary gang were after him, and he was desperate for money. In the days after Bernard Jiminez was killed, Lavelle was strangley elusive from his close-knit family. He became paranoid and constantly acting like something was wrong. Once the state of Indiana allows for the mitochondrial DNA testing of Lakisha Thompson's hair, we will all know what was wrong. "More than anything, however, meeting Timmy and maintaining contact with him makes me sure that he is innocent. Timmy is such a nice, caring person. Despite spending nearly half his life in prison, he still is a compassionate person who would never want to hurt anyone physically or emotionally. Timmy has been more eager than anyone to conduct the forensic testing that he knows will clear his name, something many people claiming wrongful conviction are not willing to do. "I once sat in prison with Timmy and asked him if I could have a sample of his hair so we could one day conduct mtDNA testing of Bernard Jimenez’s jacket. Sarah Simpson and I had to give him a long, detailed warning about how mtDNA is sensitive, and that as much as the test could help him, it would also implicate him if somehow his DNA was on Bernard. I told him to think about it before giving us his hair. Timmy did not need to think about it. He grabbed the scissors out of my hands and cut off a piece of his arm hair, asking us to test it right away. Timmy did not need to think about it. He knows he’s innocent. He knows he had nothing to do with the crimes and he’s now ready for everyone else to know and understand." |
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"I did not have a light bulb moment when I came to believe in Timmy's innocence. My team's purpose was not to prove Timmy innocent, but rather to find out the truth about what really happened that night on February 27, 1992, in Gary, Indiana. Over the course of the quarter, we took dozens of trips to Gary and spent hours scouring documents, rereading testimony, interviewing sources, and even walking the crime scenes. I eventually came to firmly believe in Timmy Donald's innocence. "During the course of our investigation, building on the work of previous students, my team and I determined that no hard evidence linked Timmy to the crimes. Instead, the case rested on the shaky accounts of Kim Belinsky and Rhonda Williams. From the beginning, each woman's testimony did not seem strong to me. And now Ms. Williams has recanted her identification of Timmy and thrown doubt on the veracity of Ms. Belinsky's testimony. This new development makes the lack of evidence against Timmy even clearer today. I truly believe that Timmy Donald is innocent." |
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"Joining the most recent investigative team to take on Willie T. Donald’s case felt like tuning into a TV series that was a few episodes in to its sixth season. The characters and major plot points were well-established. But as a newcomer, I felt lost, overwhelmed by the case’s history and complexity. "So I turned to a strategy I’d used at internships when assigned complicated stories with a long backstory: Read the clips, take notes, show up, fake it by acting like you know what you’re doing. I barricaded myself for a weekend in the Innocence Project’s small basement with the five thick binders previous groups had filled with notes. I pulled the folders of eyewitness testimony and lineup photos. I read through the thick trial transcripts. "Quickly, the relationships and events in the case began to make sense. As soon as the picture became clear, I was left with little doubt that Donald was innocent. There were many factors – he had a steady job, a solid alibi and no criminal history, and no physical evidence existed to tie him to the scene of the crime – but, for me, the observations of Mary Banks made the difference. "On the same February night that Rhonda Williams’ house was robbed and Bernard Jimenez was killed, an off-duty Gary police officer named Mary Banks was robbed by a man fitting the same description. In newspaper accounts from 1992, the crimes are described as connected. Yet Banks, a more trained observer than either Williams or Kim Belinsky, Jimenez’s fiancé, viewed a lineup that included Donald and said the man who robbed her was not in it. "Donald was convicted on the sole basis of eyewitness testimony, which is notoriously unreliable. Even worse, the witness with the most experience identifying suspects definitively excluded him. "The trial transcript runs to more than a thousand pages. It is a demonstration of police, prosecutorial and legal misconduct and ineptitude. The missed opportunities are all too obvious, and the blame is easy to spread around. The police failed to conduct a thorough investigation: Williams’ home, where the perpetrator spent a significant amount of time, was never dusted for prints. Two robberies committed earlier that night by a man of the same description were never fully investigated. Donald’s alibi, that he was helping his sister and her fiance pick out a new car the night the crimes were committed, was looked into only halfheartedly. The prosecutors failed to turn over all the evidence: The fact that Williams called 911 a few days later, hysterical, swearing she saw the burglar at a time when Donald had a verified alibi, went unmentioned. And Donald’s defense lawyer, Scott King, who was later mayor of Gary, made one of the worst decisions of all: Not calling Banks to testify, though he mentioned her in his opening and closing arguments. "Given a fair trial, Timmy Donald never would have been convicted. Unfortunately, he didn’t have one." |
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"Working on Timmy’s case has definitely been a rewarding challenge. I think one of the first times that I was convinced of his innocence was when we got to talk to his sister, Shelia Hopkins, one weekend in February. When she stated to us, first of all, the fact that the defense called almost no witnesses, I began to think that something was off. When I asked about the line-up under Detective Bruce Outlaw, and asked to see if he was treated any differently than the others, Timmy was clear when he said that the spotlight was on him. I did not fully know it back then, but I had a strong inclination that Rhonda and Kim’s determination of the line-up was too coincidental, especially since Rhonda’s identification was tentative. This was clearly shown in the police records and by how close in time the women were in the police station according to the reports. Rhonda’s recent recantation, thus, makes me especially determined to see Timmy freed as an innocent man." |
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"In this country, we're innocent until proven guilty. In the case of Timmy Donald, there is very little evidence to support his guilty verdict; in fact, the evidence points to innocence. Through my reporting with the Medill Innocence Project, I became convinced of Timmy's right to freedom. On the night of the crime spree that Timmy continues to pay time for, a man robbed three separate women. The only evidence against Timmy came from two of those victim witnesses who, before picking Timmy out of a flawed lineup, described an assailant whose physical description did not match Timmy's appearance. The third witness, Mary Banks, was a veteran of the Gary Police Department. Banks, the only victim professionally trained in identifying criminals, insisted that Timmy was not in the lineup presented to the victims. "Since Rhonda Williams' recantation, then, Timmy is in prison based on one woman's testimony and no other evidence. No court could convict any man based on such scanty evidence, especially in light of new evidence that points to coercion and intimidation on the part of the original prosecution team. "Nothing can be done to give Timmy back the time he has lost in prison, but now is the opportunity to restore his rightful claim to innocence." |
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"I became increasingly outraged as my teammates and I collected a swelling mass of proof that nothing short of injustice had been cruelly dealt 17 years ago in Gary, Indiana. The evidence in favor of Timmy Donald’s innocence is both overwhelming and heartbreaking. A detective I’ve interviewed who had been involved with the case says he was and still is certain that Timmy committed no crime. There was no motive for him to steal or rob. A straightforward examination on mine or anyone else’s part reveals that Timmy had a steady job where he was praised by his coworkers and supervisor. And his clean record was a far cry from the intensity of the crime; in fact, no physical evidence ever surfaced that even links him to any of the scenes or victims. One of the victim witnesses, an off-duty police officer with whom I’ve spoken several times, actually claims with confidence that her assailant was not in the lineup that included Timmy. The other victim witnesses were, at best, uncertain. They should have been treated with respect and understanding rather than having been taken advantage of. "So what happened? Was Timmy’s conviction just a terrible mistake, or was it disturbingly intentional? Setting aside any speculation of a conspiracy, what occurred in court 17 years ago was more of a joke than an fair trial: alibis were not adequately investigated; evidence, or lack thereof, was not properly disclosed; claims made while under oath were inconsistent; crucial witnesses were not called upon to testify; emotional appeals bullied the truth away from jurors; and the defense attorney, however well-meaning, was ineffective. "And then, in January 2009, I met Timmy. He was holding textbooks when we were first introduced, as he was studying to earn an associate’s degree in business, which he now holds. His smile was slight and shy, and his eyes, though heavy with despair, showed no sign of defeat. I was taken aback by his kindness, his ambition, and by how incredibly forgiving he is. He was disarmingly polite, and spoke eloquently and thoughtfully of his hope that the innocence he has steadfastly maintained all these years will be recognized and honored. I am absolutely certain that Timmy Donald must be freed right now as an innocent man. I stand with him and scores of others who are watching the state’s every move, impatiently waiting for the truth to correct a 17-year-old wrong." |
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(Updated January 29, 2010 5:37 pm CST)