Photo: Arkansas Department of Corrections
Ledell Lee was executed in Lincoln County, Ark., on April 20, 2017 for the 1993 murder of Debra Reese. He maintained his innocence from when he was arrested until the day he died.
Now, four years later, an attorney with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, says DNA testing from the murder weapon points to someone other than Lee.
In 1993, Reese, 26, was found dead inside her Jacksonville home. She had been strangled and beaten to death. After neighbors alleged they saw Lee enter and exit Reese’s home, he was arrested and charged with her murder,according to theArkansas Democrat-Gazettenewspaper.
After his first trial resulted in a hung jury, he was tried again and found guilty and sentenced to death in 1995.
Two weeks before he was executed, the Innocence Project and the ACLU said they’d identified flaws in the evidence used to convict Lee, according to apress release on the ACLU’s website, including the presence of “DNA evidence that likely belonged to the killer and had never been tested with modern technology.”
“The courts refused to hear any new evidence or allow DNA testing before executing Lee, who was one of eight people scheduled for execution in rapid succession because of the state’s expiring supply of execution drugs,” the release stated.
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On Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said it was his job to carry out the law after a jury found Lee guilty based upon the information that they had, the governor saidduring a press conference.
The state’s attorney general, Leslie Rutledge, stood behind the state’s decision to execute Lee.
Lee’s sister refuses to give up on working toward exonerating her brother, who she says was with her the day Reese was killed.
source: people.com
