ailhouse informants provided damaging testimony against Calvin Washington and Joe Sydney Williams for the March 1986 rape and murder of Juanita White of Waco. One man testified that he walked past a hotel room in the middle of the night and overheard Williams and Washington implicating themselves. Several other witnesses testified that Washington and Williams were spotted in the victim’s car after the murder and that they had sold some of her property. The testimony of a dental expert, Homer Campbell, who claimed that the marks on the victim’s body were bite marks that matched Williams’ teeth, helped convict both men. Williams’ conviction was overturned on direct appeal, and he was released when the prosecutor declined to retry him.
Washington remained in prison. He was released when post-conviction DNA testing showed that blood found on a shirt in Washington’s home was not the victim’s, as the prosecutor had alleged. Also, DNA found on the victim implicated another man, Bennie Carroll, who had previously confessed to raping Juanita White’s next door neighbor prior to committing suicide.
Because of unreliable jailhouse informants, Calvin Washington spent thirteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
