On Jan. 21, Dallas County officially exonerated Tommy Lee Walker, nearly 70 years after he was executed for a crime he did not commit.

The decision came after a full review by the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit, working alongside the Innocence Project, a national legal organization dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions, and Northeastern University School of Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. Following that review, the Dallas Commissioners Court approved a resolution acknowledging that Walker had been wrongfully convicted and executed for the 1953 murder of Venice Parker.

Walker was arrested in 1953 and charged with killing Parker, a White store clerk who was attacked while waiting for a bus after finishing her shift at a nearby toy store. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed, then flagged down a passing car and was taken to a local hospital, where she later died from her injuries.

According to a 1956 appellate court decision obtained by People, two individuals told police they saw Walker in the area that night, though neither witnessed the crime. Research by the Innocence Project states that Parker was unable to speak clearly because her throat had been cut. An officer who interviewed her shortly before her death later claimed she identified her attacker as a Black man.

Walker was arrested four months later by Dallas Police Homicide Bureau Chief Will Fritz, who, according to the Innocence Project, was at one point affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. Walker immediately denied the charges and provided an alibi. At the time of the crime, he was present at the birth of his only child. Ten witnesses confirmed this and testified to it during the trial.

After hours of interrogation, Walker was threatened with the electric chair and confronted with claims about evidence that did not exist. Worn down, he eventually signed two written statements. The Innocence Project later found that the first statement contained multiple factual errors. Walker withdrew the second statement almost immediately after signing it. At no point did he admit to raping Parker.

“We now know, through decades of research and wrongful convictions, that the tactics used against Mr. Walker place people at serious risk of giving false confessions,” said Lauren Gottesman, an attorney representing Walker’s son, Edward Smith. She cited the use of isolation, deception, threats of execution, and the racial bias surrounding the case.

The prosecution was led by then–Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, who the Innocence Project says was responsible for the wrongful convictions of at least 20 innocent Black men during his tenure. During Walker’s trial, Wade withheld evidence favorable to the defense, presented unproven claims as fact, and even testified himself to assert Walker’s guilt.

Walker was convicted, sentenced to death, and later denied an appeal.

Despite being told that signing a confession could spare his life, Walker was executed in the electric chair in 1956.

For Smith, the court’s decision brought long-awaited acknowledgment but no closure.

“It was hard growing up without a father,” Smith said. “When other kids talked about their dads, I had nothing to say. This won’t bring him back, but now the world knows what we always knew that he was innocent. That brings some peace.”