Convicting the Innocent
DNA Exonerations Database

Jerry Lee Evans

First Name Jerry Lee
Last NameEvans
Year of Conviction1987
Year of Exoneration2009
State of ConvictionTexas
Trial, Bench Trial, or Guilty PleaTrial
Type of CrimeRape
Death SentenceNo
Life / LWOP sentenceLife
Gender of ExonereeMale
Race of exonereeBlack
JuvenileNo
Type of Innocence Defense
  • Alibi
Description / Quotes from Testimony Concerning Defense

● No witnesses called except for exoneree

Did the defendant testify at trial?Yes
Quotes from Exoneree Testimony

“I’m under oath and I’m saying that I did not [commit the rape].”

Types of evidence at trial
  • Eyewitness
Identity of eyewitness
  • Victim
Multiple eyewitnesses2
Suggestive Procedures

Yes ● Suggestive remarks – officer provided victim information concerning suspect and told her they had a suspect. According to Dallas County D.A., Dallas police officers "were leading and encouraging" victim to pick defendant and were "enthusiastically encouraging" after identification.

Quotes from testimony #1

At trial the victim testified that the officer “said that was the man that – he said, ‘Yes, that is the person that we have been looking at as a possible suspect.” The officer told the victim at or just after the i.d. procedure "that [the defendant] had one previous arrest for something — for carrying a weapon and that wasn’t necessarily the weapon, but he also had on spiked bracelets or something like that.” The victim described the attacker as having a black gove with metallooking spikes on it. At grand jury, the victim recalled the officer having told her, "they looked up and found that he had been charged once for wearing or carrying a weapon and the weapon was spiked knuckles."

Unreliable Identification?

Yes ● Discrepancies in description – facial hair ● Initial nonidentification and initially uncertain – eyewitness could not identify defendant from photo array

Quotes from testimony #2

Eyewitness testified that "His hair is a little bit different" and "he looks a lot lighter skinned" than in photo from array. She testified that "he looks different today than he did then" and “he looks different today than he did that night.” The attacker had different facial hair. The victim said he had “some facial hair” but not amounting to a beard. The victim "was a little hesitant at first because his hair was different than it was the night that I happened and there was one picture that had hair similar to it and I said,"This guy’s hair is like it, but his face doesn’t look like it." The defendant testified that he has had a mustache and a small amount of hair on his chin, but he never had facial hair on the sides of his face.

Highest level reachedNR