Tulsa to pay wrongfully convicted man $26.25 million, detectives had lied that DNA evidence existed

24 years in prison

TULSA, (Okla.) — "I don’t be playing around with my freedom," said William Henry Jamerson.

When we interviewed him back in April, he had just filed an 89-page lawsuit in federal court after spending decades behind bars following a wrongful conviction in the 1991 rape of a 16-year-old.

"All of it is shocking," said attorney Dan Smolen of Smolen & Roytman. He's Jamerson's lawyer, and he meticulously laid out the tangled web of jaw-dropping allegations of wrongdoing by the Tulsa Police Department, the District Attorney's Office, the City of Tulsa, and even the current police chief, Dennis Larsen.

"I think he definitely knew," said Smolen.

Knew, he says, that authorities had the DNA evidence from Jamerson's case, even though time and again when Jamerson asked to have it tested, he was told it no longer existed. "We decline your request to inspect the Tulsa Police Department Laboratory and/or Property Room to search for a piece of evidence that we are certain we have destroyed..."

"They had maintained that it had been looked for. They had looked everywhere possible, that it couldn’t be found, that they were certain that it didn’t exist anymore," said Smolen.