The Tulsa City Council on Wednesday approved paying $26.25 million to William Henry Jamerson, a man who spent more than two decades in prison for a rape he did not commit. The deal comes more than a year after a judge overturned Jamerson’s 1991 conviction.
After the council vote, Jamerson said he was relieved. The 35 years he spent fighting to clear his name had conditioned him to expect bad news, but his faith taught him to never lose hope, he said.
“I’ve been getting up early because it’s been on my mind. God took me this far, so it’s a blessing to be over with it now,” Jamerson said. “All the stress is gone. I’m glad it’s over with, that’s what’s important,” he said. “I can move on with my life.”
Dan Smolen, Jamerson’s attorney, praised Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols and the council for working to settle the case. While the settlement offers Jamerson a measure of restitution, but it cannot replace the years lost or the experiences he missed, Smolen said.
“Really, what they’ve done is save themselves a $70 million jury verdict,” Smolen said. “In this case, also, you had the unique component where you had a widespread conspiracy among city personnel, law enforcement … they’re the ones who cost themselves all this money. Henry Jamerson told them he was innocent from day one.”Jamerson was 22 when he was arrested in May 1991 in connection with the rape of 16-year-old Kayleen Dubbs behind a midtown Tulsa diner. Police relied on a bloodtype test of semen collected during a sexual-assault exam, a kind of testing that police used before more reliable results from DNA were widely available. Dubbs also identified Jamerson in a photo lineup.Bottom of Form Jamerson’s trial lasted just two days. His attorney did not give an opening statement or call any witnesses. After about three hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Jamerson on three felony counts, and he was sentenced to 34 years in prison.
From the start, Jamerson maintained his innocence. Over the following decades, he repeatedly requested DNA testing of the rape kit. Tulsa police and prosecutors consistently told him the evidence had been destroyed.
Those claims were false. In 2022, Smolen, discovered the rape-kit slides in a police property facility. Smolen told The Frontier in 2023 that prosecutors had checked out the rape kit from evidence files weeks before, but did not reveal its existence or notify the court. DNA testing showed that the semen did not belong to Jamerson.
The victim told The Frontier in 2023 that she no longer believed Jamerson was her attacker and felt guilt that her statements had helped send him to prison. She said she had felt that police had directed her to identify Jamerson during the investigation.
The conviction continued to have lasting consequences for Jamerson. Even after his release in 2015, he remained listed on Oklahoma’s sex-offender registry, a mark that disrupted his employment prospects and daily life.
Prosecutors initially opposed vacating Jamerson’s conviction. They relied on the original identification and the 1991 jury verdict to argue that his conviction should remain.
On July 9, 2024, Tulsa County District Judge David Guten granted Jamerson’s request to void the conviction. Guten wrote that the newly discovered DNA evidence “undermines confidence in the verdict” and acknowledged that Jamerson’s original trial had been flawed.
The ruling detailed mistakes made by Tulsa police and prosecutors. The prosecution had relied on incomplete and misleading evidence, and police had falsely claimed the DNA evidence no longer existed. The judge concluded that if the new evidence had been available at the original trial, the jury likely would have reached a different outcome.
Oklahoma ranks among the top states per capita for overturned convictions since 1989, and Tulsa County alone has seen more than a dozen cases vacated after new evidence surfaced, according to data from the National Registry of Exonerations.
