CONTENTSIntroduction: A Specimen in Amber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
xv PART 1. CONVICTIONChapter 1: A Murder in Dallas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3
Chapter 2: The Day After . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9
Chapter 3: Defying Gravity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
17
Chapter 4: A Break in the Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
25
Chapter 5: No Excuse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
35
Chapter 6: Entering the Tunnel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
44
Chapter 7: Witnesses for Sale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
53
Chapter 8: Alternatively. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
66
Chapter 9: A Noble Cause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
77
Chapter 10: In the Shadow of Henry Wade. . . . . . . . . .
88
Chapter 11: The Shell Game. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
100
Chapter 12: What the Jury Saw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
110
Chapter 13: The Defense Rests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
120
Chapter 14: A Brief History of Innocence. . . . . . . . . .
129 PART 2. APPEALChapter 15: No Harm, No Foul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
143
Chapter 16: The Priest of Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
154
Chapter 17: Double Helix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
165
Chapter 18: A Punitive Turn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
177
Chapter 19: A Network of Innocents. . . . . . . . . . . . .
187
Chapter 20: Batman and Robbery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
195
Chapter 21: Down to the Studs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
207
Chapter 22: A New Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
217
Chapter 23: Lost in Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
225
Chapter 24: A Second Bite at the Apple . . . . . . . . . .
236
Chapter 25: Judgment Day Redux . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
249
Chapter 26: Ground Truth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
259
Chapter 27: No Way Out. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
272
PART 3. DARKNESS AND LIGHTChapter 28: The Surge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
287Chapter 29: Innocence Deniers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
299
Chapter 30: No Justice for Some . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
307
Chapter 31: Fresh Eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
321
Chapter 32: And Then There Were None. . . . . . . . .
335
Chapter 33: Reprieve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
347Chapter 34: Limbo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
360
Chapter 35: State of Play. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
369
Chapter 36: A Partial Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
379 Author’s Note 387Acknowledgments 393Notes 397Index 431 xvi introduction The story of Benjamine Spencer, a Black man convicted of robbing and killing a white man in Dallas in 1987, unfolds on two levels: the procedural and the personal. Procedurally, his experience mirrors that of thousands of innocent men and women in prison. It boils down to this settled fact: Convicting an innocent person is easy; undoing the mistake is almost impossible.
His journey also spans the modern innocence movement that began with Jim McCloskey. One year after Spencer was sentenced to life in prison, DNA exonerated a prisoner convicted of rape—the first time the technology was employed to free an innocent person in the United States. Suddenly, the judicial system, the media, and the public at large saw that the foundation on which prosecutors had al ways built their cases was rickety at best. DNA could offer irrefutable evidence that someone else, almost certainly not the suspect in custody, had raped or killed the victim. DNA proved that evidence such as eyewitness testimony, ballistics, hair comparisons, finger printing—even confessions from the suspect—could be flatout wrong. But if DNA is the deus ex machina for innocent prisoners, it is a selective god, visiting only 10 to 20 percent of crime scenes. Like the vast majority of prisoners who claim to be innocent, DNA could not help Ben Spencer. Without unassailable forensic evidence, Spencer’s several appeals failed.
Even as some states have tried to avoid mistakes with new procedures and better science, they cannot fix two problems at the root of the US criminal justice system: the human mind and the human body. Can a witness accurately record and replay a crime that takes place in a split second on a dark, moonless night? What if the witness is poor or has an axe to grind; can science erase the motive to lie? Jailhouse informants play a leading role in murder convictions, an astonishing fact unique to the United States: What is to stop these criminals from trading bogus “confessions” from the suspect for a shorter sentence for themselves? Police, rushing to find the culprit while the trail still has scent, have been known to discard or ignore evidence that points away from their suspect. Prosecutors have rationalized burying a piece of evidence because it muddies the clear story they are trying to tell in the interest of serving justice.
If convicting the innocent is the natural result of human error, undoing the mistake is thwarted by the legal system—specifically, by the concept of “finality.” Appellate judges rarely overturn jury verdicts; after all, they did not sit in court listening to evidence and assessing witnesses, so who are they to second-guess the jury? And while Americans now recognize that the government routinely convicts innocent people, Congress and the US Supreme Court have narrowed the path to freedom for the wrongly convicted by systematically blocking the federal courts’ ability to review a jury verdict, even in the face of obvious innocence.
On a personal level, Ben Spencer was twenty-two years old when he was arrested, newly married to Debra, and expecting a child. At first confident that the police would sort things out, he watched in disbelief as he was indicted, convicted, sentenced to life in prison, and denied parole year after year. The toll on Spencer, on his wife and son, on his family and friends, on their faith in God and in the law can never be calculated. These private narratives are almost always hidden. But Ben and Debra Spencer have allowed us the rare privilege of surveying the wreckage the system has wrought.
For several months during 2020 and 2021, I lived in Dallas, trying to uncover new evidence and solve the murder of Jeffrey Young. My efforts felt futile at times. Once the Texas legal system found Ben Spencer guilty, it was as if that judgment sealed him in amber, and he needed an extraordinary instrument, such as DNA, to free him. Without this scientific cudgel, Spencer’s lawyers and investigators had to make do with something akin to an ice pick, trying to chip
away at his conviction, filing writs and parole applications, petitioning one district attorney after another, hoping that these efforts would eventually crack apart his case and release him as an innocent man.
The thirty-seven years since Spencer was incarcerated have seen a reckoning. Defense attorneys across the country began publicizing wrongful convictions. The public noticed, as did judges, legislators, and a new breed of prosecutor. Rather than simply denying the mistakes, most states began to recognize that prosecutions can go off the rails, and some have tried to eliminate the most egregious flaws. In a happy surprise, on this issue the most progressive state in the country is Texas. In part because the cost of error is so high—the state executes more people than any other—Texas has set up a number of guardrails and is by far the state that most generously recompenses its exonerees.
Thus Texas is the perfect starting point to begin and end the story of Ben Spencer, the logical place to examine the failure of American justice and the incipient attempts to redeem it. For this journey, Ben Spencer is a consummate guide.
Copyright © 2024 by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
