The family of Ledell Lee has been left devastated after new DNA evidence was discovered on the murder weapon, four years after his execution for a crime he always insisted he did not commit.Lee was convicted in 1995 for the 1993 murder of Debra Reese, who was found dead after being strangled and beaten with a small wooden bat.
The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld his conviction in 1997, but questions about Lee’s involvement in the crime have persisted for decades.
Several neighbors of Reese told investigators they had seen Lee near the crime scene. However, his family strongly disputed this in a lawsuit filed in 2020.“No physical evidence directly tied Mr. Lee to the murder of Ms. Reese,” they said.
Lee was executed on April 20, 2017, maintaining his innocence until the very end in his final words to the BBC.
Lee was executed in 2017Arkansas Department of Corrections
“My dying words will always be, as it has been: I am an innocent man,” he said.In 2021, four years after his execution, an attorney representing Lee’s family revealed that DNA from another individual had been found on the murder weapon.
This new discovery raised even more doubts about the legitimacy of Lee’s conviction.
Lee Short, one of Lee’s attorneys, told CNN: “I think if those results had been had before he was executed, he’d still be alive.”
The DNA testing was commissioned by Lee’s attorneys, the Innocence Project, and the American Civil Liberties Union.Their findings identified the presence of an unknown man’s DNA on the murder weapon.
According to CNN, this DNA matched samples found on a blood-stained white t-shirt wrapped around the weapon, attorneys confirmed.
Additional DNA testing was conducted on six hairs found at the crime scene. These hairs had been used as evidence in the trial that led to Lee’s conviction.
Lee’s sister, Patricia Young, shared a statement through the Innocence Project following the new findings: “We are glad there is new evidence in the national DNA database and remain hopeful that there will be further information uncovered in the future.”She added: “We ask for privacy for our family in this difficult time.”
The DNA testing occurred only after Lee’s execution, though his attorneys had fought for such testing during his appeal process.
That request was ultimately denied.“The reasoning given by the judge was it wouldn’t matter, that there were three people who saw him at or near that neighborhood on that day and time and honestly the DNA just wouldn’t matter,” Short said.
Meanwhile, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson responded by stating that the evidence was “inconclusive” and emphasized that the jury reached its verdict based on the information available at the time.
