hile shopping in a convenience store in his neighborhood, James Waller was identified by a twelve-year-old boy as the man who had sexually assaulted him in his family’s apartment. The boy initially described the intruder as an African-American man who wore a cowboy hat and a bandana around the lower half of his face. Waller and his family lived in the same apartment complex and were the only African-American residents of the complex.
Police arrested Waller based on the boy’s identification. The apartment manager had also reported seeing an unknown male with a cowboy hat and bandana. After the boy’s identification, the apartment manager also identified Waller as the person she had seen.
At trial, the state’s case rested almost solely on the testimony of the two eyewitnesses. The victim testified that he knew Waller was his attacker based on Waller’s eyes and voice. The boy admitted that he had been unable to see his assailant’s face. Moreover, Waller was substantially taller and heavier than the man described by the victim in his initial conversation with the police. The apartment manager also identified Waller at trial as the man she spotted wearing the hat and bandana near the scene. However, her testimony was inconsistent with her original description because she had previously described an “unknown” man and she knew Waller as a resident of the building.
Questionable voice and eyewitness identifications put James Waller in prison for eleven years for a crime he did not commit.
Despite the discrepancies in the identifications, and alibi testimony given by Waller’s girlfriend, Waller was convicted of aggravated sexual abuse and sentenced to thirty years in prison.
Waller was paroled in 1993 after spending eleven years in prison and was required to register as a child sex offender. In 2003, post-conviction DNA tests were unable to extract a DNA profile from the small amount of biological evidence available, but Waller received permission to have previously unavailable advanced DNA testing conducted on liquid extracts of the semen evidence that had been preserved. In 2006, those results conclusively proved that Waller did not commit the rape. Waller was officially pardoned by Governor Rick Perry in March 2007.
Because of the mistaken eyewitness identifications in his case, James Douglas Waller spent eleven years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
