A couple was attacked at their Jackson, Mississippi, home in the early hours of June 12, 1994. Male victim DL was shot in the leg while in his driveway. This wife, CL, was raped. On June 16, 1994, a string of four armed robberies were committed in Jackson in a three hour period. CW and his family were the victims of the third robbery, in which CW was shot in the leg. He died six days later as a result. Ballistics showed that the same gun had been used in all five crimes. Acting on a tip from an informant that gave police a street name, the photo of Cedric Willis was placed in a photographic lineup and shown to the family of CW, victims CL and DL, and the other robbery victims. CW’s family, as well as CL and DL, picked out Mr. Willis’s photo. The other robbery victims did not. Mr. Willis was then put in a physical lineup with four others. CW’s family and CL picked out Mr. Willis from that lineup and he was arrested and charged with the June 12, 1994, attack of DL and CL and the June 16, 1994, attack of CW and his family. The other robberies were never investigated past this point, despite police learning of a gang of men driving a distinctive car described by many witnesses of the June 16, 1994, robbery spree. The officer who received the alleged tip would not reveal the identity of his informant, though he was ordered to by his supervisor and by the district attorney. He refused until a grand jury subpoena forced him to. In 1995, DNA testing of the rape kit collected from CL revealed that Mr. Willis did not rape her. The evidence was re-tested by the state the next year and the second set of results confirmed the findings of the first. Then, in August 1996, the district attorney’s office received information that DL had reported seeing a “look alike” to police. All of this evidence led the state to secure a new indictment against Mr. Willis. This second indictment did not include the crimes against DL and CL, but added robbery charges to the crimes involving CW and his family. At trial, the jury never learned of the DNA testing results that proved Mr. Willis’s innocence of the crimes involving DL and CL, nor that they’d misidentified him. The jury also never heard that ballistics testing concluded that the shooting of CW was part of a spree involving the same gun, crimes for which Mr. Willis had solid alibis. Further, the descriptions given by witnesses in the robbery cases were both remarkably similar to each other and did not at all match Mr. Willis. The state’s only evidence was comprised of the eyewitness identifications made by CW’s family. Mr. Willis presented alibis, but a jury convicted him of murder and three counts of armed robbery in September 1997. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Innocence & Justice Louisiana started investigating Mr. Willis’s case in 2004, uncovering evidence of improper and suggestive identification tactics being employed by police. This evidence, combined with the evidence that the same gun had been used in all of these crimes, including the one that Mr. Willis was proven innocent of by DNA testing, and the weakness of the police and prosecution case, convinced the state to join Innocence & Justice Louisiana in filing to dismiss the charges against Mr. Willis. He was exonerated in March 2006, after spending almost 12 years in prison for crimes he didn’t commit. Just over 13 years later, Mr. Willis was killed on the street near his Jackson, Mississippi, home. He had just turned 44 years old.
