The majority of individuals wrongfully convicted of murder, sexual assault and drug crimes are Black, according to a study recently released by the National Registry of Wrongful Convictions titled “Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States.” In addition, African-American prisoners who are convicted of murder are about 50 percent more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers. Connie McCullar, the mother of an incarcerated Black man, feels her son’s past caused a judge to view him as criminal despite what she views as a lack of evidence.
“I don’t know if they had a vendetta against Black boys, or whatever, but something caused them to say, ‘I’m taking those boys down, and we are going to say whatever to get them off the street.’ I understand that … my child could have been doing any and everything wrong in Indianapolis, but he still doesn’t deserve to be locked up for something he didn’t do,” said McCullar.
The incident that landed her son behind bars occurred in April of 2001, when Tiara McGinty, 13, was preparing to leave her home. According to court documents, McGinty opened the front door to multiple men in black hooded sweatshirts standing on her porch. McGinty turned her back to the men and attempted to walk back inside her home, but she was shot from behind through a screen door. Bullets struck her thigh and her back, bruising her heart and breaking her rib. During an interview with Indianapolis Police Detective Jeffrey Wager, McGinty identified McCullar’s son, Kendrick Morris, as one of the shooters. Morris was charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery and unlawful possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
In 2015, McGinty stated she was pressured into identifying Morris by law enforcement and admitted to not knowing the identity of the shooters. “(Detective Wager) basically told me that the three men that was in question was the ones who shot me,” McGinty was quoted saying in a court document.
When Morris filed a petition arguing that her statement warranted a new trial, the court decided McGinty’s new testimony failed a nine-part common law test for newly discovered evidence and that her repudiation of her original testimony only served to undermine her credibility. The Recorder reached out to McGinty for comment but was unable to speak with her as of press time.
“Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, (neither) this detective nor the courts will ever willfully admit to any wrongdoing, so despite the overwhelming show of evidence of my innocence the court denied me justice,” Morris wrote in a letter to the Recorder. “What was done to me was done in the dark with no one paying attention.”
It has been well over a decade since Morris found himself behind bars due to this incident, and he is still claiming innocence. His mother believes the victim of the shooting knows her son didn’t pull the trigger that night.
“I do believe (Tiara) was coerced into identifying my son,” said McCullar. “She told me this herself when she came to the last trial. She came to me crying, saying, ‘I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to do this to your family.’ I asked her, ‘Why would you say my son did it?’ She said ‘They showed me a picture and said, this is who shot you.’ I was like, wow.”
Nationwide, there are a number of organizations seeking justice for wrongfully incarcerated individuals. The Innocence Network is a group of organizations providing free legal investigative services to such inmates. Here in Indiana, the Wrongful Conviction Clinic at IUPUI is a founding member of the Innocence Network and allows students to put law into practice by providing live-client representation to Indiana inmates in state and federal proceedings.
Frances Lee Watson is a clinical professor of law at IUPUI and the founder of the Wrongful Conviction Clinic at the university. Watson is also Morris’ attorney. Watson has hundreds of letters in numerous storage bins inside her office from individuals who claim innocence, but she is only able to take on a small number of clients each year. Morris’ case was brought to her attention because one of her law students knew him personally. Typically, a research assistant helps her sort through the large numbers of letters her office receives. Watson says DNA evidence helps tremendously in wrongful conviction cases, but there was no DNA evidence in Morris’ case.
“It takes years and years and years to just do one case, and I do them with law students, which only makes them take longer,” Watson said. “The last one I got was out of Muncie. He was a mentally disabled white man and was exonerated due to DNA evidence, but he waited years and years for representation. The first people you can help are DNA cases.”
Watson said it is unlikely that Morris will find himself out of jail anytime soon. The most he can hope for is a modification of his sentence or a governor’s pardon.
“It’s a hard process to say the government cheated, cop you lied, judge you are wrong, and we never met that hurdle with Kendrick. They think he shot a little girl and are convinced they are right, and when the police think they are right, they are right,” said Watson. “I have strong opinions on all of these issues from a public defender perspective. I tell my students, if we could fix the public defender system, that would go a long way toward righting wrongful convictions, and then we wouldn’t have to do this innocence stuff. Do it right the first time, and keep these kids out of prison.”
According to a 2016 study by the Sixth Amendment Center, an organization that works to ensure that no person faces jail time without having the aid of a lawyer with the time, ability and resources to develop an effective defense, Indiana’s public defender system is extremely underfunded and the state’s model for providing the Sixth Amendment right to counsel services is inherently flawed.
“The public defense systems in many Indiana counties have undue judicial interference, undue political interference, flat-fee contracts or all three, that produce conflicts between the lawyer’s self-interest and the defendant’s right to effective representation. These conflicts result in public defense attorneys throughout Indiana carrying excessive caseloads and spending insufficient time on their public cases,” the report states.
McCullar still has hope for a sentence modification and would like to see her son given a second chance.
“All throughout his life, if he did it, he would say, ‘I did that.’ He’s not a liar, and he wouldn’t lie about shooting a child,” said McCullar. “I really would like for him to get a sentence modification and for them to let my child out. I know they know he didn’t do this. It’s been a really hard 17 years without my child.”
Kendrick Morris, pictured here with his parents, says he has been wrongfully convicted of attempted murder.
