The Innocence Project of Texas

It Wasn’t Him
Written by Joyce King * Photo by Greg Kendall-Ball

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to affairs.”
James Douglas Waller was probably never a big fan or learned student of Emerson, but he knew, like the writer of old, truth and justice were born allies. Separate them, and chaos will reign. After the deliberate disconnection of rightly-joined principles, Waller was forced to witness the poor substitutes of lies and injustice. His journey back to being was brutal, and yet, bittersweet in the end.

Crime
It was November 1982. Pre-dawn, around 6 a.m. Two young brothers were asleep. The smell of rain lingered in the air. A strange man was standing at the foot of their bed wearing a cowboy hat and boots. His face was concealed by a red bandana. He commanded both children to put their faces into their pillows. The assailant then tied the boys‘ hands, sexually assaulting the 12-year old. After asking where the brothers attended school and where their mother worked, the rapist threatened to return with a second intimidator and shoot them if they told anyone about the attack.

Identification
The next evening, according to testimony, the young victim was outside playing when James Waller happened by, on his way to the store. He followed Waller, who often frequented Jimmy‘s Food Store. The victim testified that he heard Waller speaking at 7-11, which was located across the street from Jimmy‘s. Waller has always maintained he was never in the convenience store that day. But somehow, the child convinced himself that Waller was the attacker he had described as 5″8 wearing a brown cowboy hat. The boy says he “heard” Waller speak and knew it was the same man who had raped him the day before. The victim ran to the apartment manager and she called Dallas Police. When she saw Waller returning from the store, she too became convinced that Waller, who is 6″4, was the suspect. At trial, the apartment manager also testified that she discovered, weeks later, an address book that belonged to Waller outside the window ledge used to enter the victim‘s apartment. This was beyond damning. It was also a remarkable piece of evidence “a pop-up phone book” that could not have gone undetected by investigators who combed the entire crime scene, inside and out. All along, James Waller kept telling people they had the wrong man. “It wasn‘t me,” became the battle cry of this falsely-accused citizen.

Evidence
A bed sheet was collected. Doctors gingerly took samples from the young victim. A rape kit detected the presence of semen. Three hair fragments with “Negroid” characteristics were discovered in the sheet and analyzed for testing. This was significant because the victim and his family were of European ancestry, Waller is black. According to the Southwest Institute of Forensic Sciences, the hair fragments did not belong to Waller. The state response was a contention that those three hairs were present by some unknown manner.

Defense
Eager to tell his story and face jurors, Waller testified in his own defense and presented alibi witnesses. During the crime, Waller was asleep in bed with his girlfriend. She corroborated, as did a cousin who lived in the apartment with them. Waller had a valid explanation for how the mysterious phone book surfaced weeks later. His family was evicted from the nearby apartment complex two weeks after his arrest. He routinely left the address book high in a closet where his roommates would not otherwise discover it, and did not discover it when they were forced to vacate. Another fact defense attorneys wanted on the record: In the weeks after Waller‘s arrest, the apartment manager for the victim‘s unit also became manager of Waller‘s complex, which at the very least, meant access. She denied entering the apartment Waller had rented. But he could only guess, at trial, that the new occupants discarded the phone book that was so randomly discovered at the other complex, and quite conveniently, outside near the victim‘s window.

Punishment
It took about 46 minutes for the jury to return a unanimous guilty verdict against James Douglas Waller. The native Louisianan had no prior convictions. He was returned to a holding cell in a state of shock and disbelief. Waller had always loved shows like Perry Mason, believing that if a man told the truth a jury was bound by law to weigh the evidence. “What did they use to convict me?” Waller has asked over the years. He spent 11 years in four units of the Texas Department of Corrections, now known as the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

After Waller was released on parole in 1993, he was degraded and humiliated even further. Waller was forced to register as a sex offender. He worked odd jobs before becoming a team leader at a local chemical processing plant. During that time, Waller conducted prayer services at lunchtime for his co-workers and shared a sense of purpose and fellowship with them. As Waller focused on proving his innocence, the worst time in his personal journey was yet to come.

Redemption
The mission to reclaim his good name gained momentum in 2001. Waller and his family had saved enough money for DNA testing on the collected semen samples, but the Texas Department of Public Safety could not get a result and the sample was consumed. That same year, tragedy dealt Waller another unfair hand–his pregnant wife, Doris, was killed in a car accident. Their baby daughter, Grace, could not be saved. Waller‘s mission to clear his name had lost its biggest supporter. He felt like two Ground Zeroes had swallowed him up. But good women in his family, and faith in God, kept Waller from quitting. In 2002, Waller requested DNA testing on the hair fragments found at the crime scene. Results excluded him, but Waller remained a convicted felon and registered sex offender in the eyes of the law and the community at large.

After appealing to more than 10 law firms across the United States, the Innocence Project agreed to represent Waller. With Nina Morrison as lead attorney, she found that while the DPS lab had consumed the sample, there were “extracts” that could still be tested. This glimmer of hope gave Waller more courage to stay the course, his faith bolstered by Morrison and Innocence Project student-volunteers named Stephanie, Amy and Sarah. The extracts were tested under a more sophisticated Y-STR analysis in 2006. Both Waller and the victim were excluded as the source of the semen. In December 2006, Waller‘s Dallas County conviction was finally vacated. At his exoneration, on January 17, 2007, Waller stood before the court and thanked God for the redemption he prayed would someday come. He “wasn‘t the one” and now the world would know that a courageous man, who endured a wrongful conviction, prison time, life as a registered sex offender and the loss of his whole family, was completely innocent.

With his redemption on display, Waller is active in his church and speaks publicly about the road to exoneration. He is an inspiration and mentor to other exonerees who continue to struggle with the injustices beset upon them by an unforgiving system. It is a broken system that callously metes out false justice sanctioned by some who reject truth and change. Thankfully, there are others adamant about doing the right thing.

State District Judge John Creuzot apologized for all that Waller endured after his wrongful conviction. Another man, who had only been sworn in as new Dallas County district attorney, Craig Watkins, also offered his heartfelt apology, something that meant a lot to a man who had just beaten the system that denied him 24 years of his life.

Waller can smile today, especially when he hears the lyrics of a rap song, by Triple G, about his case. It Wasn‘t Me.

No, Dallas, it wasn‘t James Waller.

* Joyce King is the author of the critically-acclaimed HATE CRIME: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas and a forthcoming book on the Innocence Project of Texas.

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