Four years after the execution of Ledell Lee, who was convicted of murder, DNA testing has revealed that genetic material on the murder weapon belongs to another man. Lawyers affiliated with the Innocence Project and the American Civil Liberties Union revealed the new genetic profile, which has now been uploaded to a national criminal database in an attempt to find the killer, The New York Times reported.
Lee maintained his innocence for 22 years.
“My dying words will always be, as it has been, ‘I am an innocent man,’” he told the BBC in 2017, shortly before officials in Arkansas administered the lethal injection.
Ledell Lee was executed in 2017, 4 years later new DNA testing showed that his DNA was never on the murder weapon ???? pic.twitter.com/QlBmUAHOpt
— My Mixtapez (@mymixtapez) May 8, 2021
His sister Patricia Young now continues to fight, hoping to prove that her brother didn't strangle 26-year-old Debra Reese in Jacksonville, Arkansas in 1993.
“We are glad there is new evidence in the national DNA database and remain hopeful that there will be further information uncovered in the future,” Young said in a statement last week.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson defended Lee’s execution on Tuesday.
“It’s my duty to carry out the law,” he said. “The fact is that the jury found him guilty based upon the information that they had.”
Hutchinson described the new DNA evidence as “inconclusive.”
According to The Washington Post, Lee became the first person put to death in Arkansas in more than a decade. Nina Morrison, senior litigation counsel at the Innocence Project, said "there are now new DNA profiles that were not available during the trial or post-conviction proceedings in Mr. Lee’s case.”
But the new evidence hasn't yet matched any of the DNA profiles that are already in the FBI's database, taken from people who were convicted or arrested on suspicion of violent crimes.
“However, the DNA profile will now remain in the database and will be automatically compared to all new profiles from convicted persons, arrestees or unsolved crimes that are entered in the future,” Lee's supporters said in a statement.
The Innocence Project said there was never any physical evidence that connected Lee to the murder. The convicted man was facing his trial on Oct. 10, 1995, seven days after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Young said the Simpson case impacted her brother's trial.
“Mr. Lee, a Black man charged with the vicious beating and murder of a white woman in her home, was tried under the shadow of the O.J. Simpson prosecution and trial,” Young stated. “The Simpson verdict shocked and angered many white Americans and polarized the nation along racial lines. It’s difficult to imagine that any jury could be truly objective in considering the evidence against Mr. Lee at that particular moment in time.”
Leslie Rutledge, the Arkansas attorney general, said on Thursday that "the courts consistently rejected Ledell Lee’s frivolous claims."
"The evidence demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that he murdered Debra Reese by beating her to death inside her home with a tire thumper,” she said in a statement. “I am prayerful that Debra’s family has had closure following his lawful execution in 2017.”
While many advocates continue to speak up against the death penalty, capital punishment is still permitted in 27 states, the National Conference of State Legislatures stated. As Blavity previously reported, former President Donald Trump permitted five federal executions in his final days in office, four of which were Black men.
