’93-case evidence on track to testing

A consent order has been issued that opens the door for the analysis of DNA and fingerprint evidence in a 27-year-old murder case that resulted in the 2017 execution of the man convicted of the killing.

The Arkansas Civil Liberties Union, the Innocence Project and other criminal-justice advocacy groups filed a lawsuit last month on behalf of Patricia Young, the sister of executed Ledell Lee. The suit sought to obtain unused evidence that has remained in the possession of the Jacksonville Police Department, the agency that investigated the 1993 slaying.

The lawsuit filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court was amended last week seeking to have the evidence tested and the results released.

The plaintiffs hope the DNA and fingerprint evidence will exonerate Lee, who was convicted in 1995 in the beating death two years earlier of Debra Reese, who was killed in her home during a robbery, according

to trial testimony.

Lee’s first trial in Reese’s slaying ended with a hung jury, but he was convicted and sentenced to death in his second trial. Plaintiffs have contended that Lee’s attorneys were ineffective, including his appellate attorney, who failed to seek DNA testing of the evidence.

During the trial, prosecutors relied on eyewitness testimony from several of Reese’s neighbors, who said they saw Lee roaming the neighborhood the morning of the slaying. Lee was never linked to the crime through DNA analysis.

“Everything is moving forward,” Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, said during a phone interview Wednesday. “We just need to work out some logistics.”

Last week, the Jacksonville City Council voted 6-0 to have a laboratory test the DNA and release the results. Mayor Bob Johnson said after the special meeting that doing so was “the right move.”

A decision on where the DNA will be tested still hasn’t been made, but will be made soon, Stubbs said.

“I don’t anticipate any difficulty with that,” she said. “It’s just a matter of where and when, and where the backlogs are.”

Lee, who was a convicted rapist in two unrelated cases, maintained his innocence in Reese’s murder during the appellate process.

He was executed on April 20, 2017, the first of four men executed by the state over an eight-day period. His was the state’s first execution since 2005.