by Jacob G. Hornberger

January 27, 2026

I was recently reading an article about a black man in Texas named Tommy Lee Walker who was convicted of murder and rape in 1953 and executed less than three years later. It turns out that Walker was innocent of the crime and actually had ten witnesses establishing an alibi for him. The article pointed out that the Dallas County Commissioners Court recently acknowledged Walker’s innocence — 70 years after his execution.

Walker’s conviction took place during the time that Henry Wade served as the elected District Attorney of Dallas County. Wade served as DA for 36 years — from 1951 through 1987. The article quoted the Innocence Project, which handled the case that established Walker’s innocence:

Mr. Walker was interrogated for hours by notorious Homicide Bureau Chief and one-time Ku Klux Klan member Will Fritz and Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, who oversaw 20 proven wrongful convictions of innocent Black men. Over several hours of interrogation, officials lied to Mr. Walker about existing evidence and threatened him with the electric chair. Under unimaginable pressure, Mr. Walker signed two written “confessions.” The first included factual inaccuracies that made the confession implausible. The second, which Mr Walker signed and then immediately recanted, was “fixed” by police to fit the details of the crime.

When I saw Henry Wade’s name mentioned in that article, I couldn’t help but think about my own experience with Wade, dating back to 1975. That was the year I was graduating from law school at the University of Texas at Austin.

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer, but not just any lawyer. I wanted to be a trial lawyer. My three years in law school were boring for me because almost none of the classes taught law students how to try a case. Instead, they dealt with legal issues — things like contracts, civil and criminal procedure, and constitutional law. Thus, oftentimes I would skip class and instead go to the law library to study books on such trial subjects as direct examination of witnesses, cross-examination, and jury summation. There was one class, however, that did deal with how to try a case. It was called “Trial Advocacy,” which, unfortunately, was only one semester long. Needless to say, I loved that class!

Thus, I knew that once I became a lawyer, I wanted to try cases. I figured that the best way to get quick trial experience straight out of law school was to go to work for a state District Attorney’s office. I applied for a job at the Dallas County District Attorney’s office, where Henry Wade was the DA.

The hiring process involved a series of around 3 or 4 personal interviews with members of Wade’s staff. If one passed the initial interview, he would go to the next higher interview. If he passed that one, he’d go to the next higher one.

I passed all the interviews and was at the final one. I had no doubts that I had the job in the bag. At that interview, I was asked a simple question: “If you become convinced that the person you are prosecuting is innocent, what do you do?” I answered: “I stop prosecuting and move to dismiss the charges.”

Well, that answer apparently didn’t go over too well because I ended up not getting the job.

But sometimes life works out for the best. For me as a lawyer, there would be few bigger horrors than to participate in the prosecution, conviction, and especially the execution of an innocent man or woman. According to ChatGPT, “At least 35 people convicted under Dallas County DA Henry Wade have later been exonerated.” According to the website of the Texas Historical Association,

Wade achieved one of the lowest acquittal rates in the country, but his methods resulted in a number of wrongful convictions. In 1989, three years after Wade had retired, two of his cases, one resulting in a life sentence and one whose defendant sat on death row, were overturned when it was determined that Wade had deliberately withheld vital evidence. More recently, DNA evidence has helped overturn at least twenty-five convictions secured by Henry Wade. From 2001 to 2008 DNA testing exonerated more defendants from Dallas County than any other county and all but three states.