our months after police circulated a flier and composite sketch in a local jail about a 1988 sexual assault of an Irving woman, an inmate told police that Gregory Wallis had a tattoo similar to the description given by the victim. A photo of Wallis was included in a photo lineup presented to the victim and she identified Wallis as her attacker. Investigators found no physical evidence linking Wallis to the attack.
Gregory Wallis spent eighteen years in prison due to a mistaken eyewitness identification
Although biological evidence was taken from the scene, forensic DNA analysis was not available at the time. At trial, the prosecution relied entirely on the victim’s eyewitness testimony, and Wallis was convicted and sentenced to fifty years in prison.
In 2004, DNA testing could not entirely exclude Wallis as the attacker, but the test results had cast enough doubt to motivate prosecutors to offer a deal. Prosecutors offered Wallis his freedom if he agreed to spend the rest of his life as a registered sex offender. Wallis refused and remained in prison. A few months later, a more sophisticated DNA test proved that Wallis was not the perpetrator. Wallis was released in March 2006.
Because of a mistaken eyewitness identification, Gregory Wallis spent eighteen years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
