Picture this, you are 22 years old, in the prime of your life, with a pregnant and devoted
wife you haven’t been married to for very long.
And then everything changes one night when a man is murdered in the street.
You are accused of the murder, with the evidence being that it was your face a witness saw
running from the scene of the crime.
That evidence is weak to say the least, and seeing as you know very well you didn’t
do it, you are confident you’ll get off.
But that’s not the case, and you will spend many years behind bars.
A trial judge will say you are likely innocent some twenty years after the crime was committed,
and you still won’t get out.
How could this happen?
Let’s start from the beginning.
The man we are talking about is named Benjamine Spencer, and he was convicted along with another
man of committing a murder on a quiet street in West Dallas over 30 years ago.
On March 22, in the year of 1987, a 33-year-old named Jeffrey Young who was doing well for
himself at a clothing company was attacked after walking out of his company office around
9.30 pm.
The police report says he was then manhandled into his BMW by two men and drove over to
West Dallas, and it’s there his body was dumped down a dark alley.
Police thought they had gotten lucky when witnesses came forward and said they saw what
happened.
There were three of those witnesses, and they identified two men.
One was Spencer and the other was named Robert Mitchell.
But as the district attorney of Dallas now says, something might have been amiss because
the witnesses all knew Spencer.
These people were not strangers.
Spencer was by no means an angel.
He’d spent some time behind bars before for driving on a suspended license and had
also been put on probation for six years for driving a car that had been stolen by a friend.
Nonetheless, as we said, his new wife was pregnant and he was turning over a new leaf.
After he was picked up four days after the crime he wasn’t very worried.
It was just a mistake, a case of mistaken identity.
But that wasn’t the case at all.
Spencer had an alibi, too, which was the testimony of a young woman friend of his who said she
had been hanging out with him when the murder and robbery took place.
On top of that, there was no physical evidence linking Spencer to the crime, just those witness
testimonies.
During the robbery a watch had been stolen, as well as a wedding ring, a small portable
TV, and a briefcase.
None of these things were found at Spencer’s house.
Police didn’t have any fingerprint evidence nor was there a murder weapon found.
Many years later Spencer would say in an interview, “I began to think, 'Well, I didn't commit
this offence, the truth is going to come out.”
But a few months down the line Spencer was sentenced to 35 years in prison, with the
evidence being the witness’ testimony as well as a jailhouse informant’s testimony.
It was a nightmare come true, Spencer’s heart sank, his life was ruined.
The father-to-be had become a condemned man, and the state had failed to do its job in
his eyes.
But not long into his sentence Spencer got a break.
It turned out that the star witness in his case had lied.
She had not told the truth about whether she had received a reward for coming forward and
giving evidence.
A new trial was set, but Spencer was then offered a plea deal by the state.
He could probably get out in five years if he accepted this.
But wasn’t this 5 years too much?
And why would an innocent man taint his name by admitting he killed someone when he hadn’t?
In his mind he had been wronged, and accepting a plea deal was just another wrong in the
topsy-turvy world of American justice.
Nonetheless, his attorney told him to take it.
Years alter Spencer would tell NPR, “He was saying, 'If you take it to trial, they're
going to try to give you a life sentence, and they're likely to get it.
And I'm like, 'I'm not going to plead guilty to something I didn't do.”
Who in their right mind would?
And so, he didn’t accept the deal.
During the second trial the state prosecuted Spencer for aggravated robbery and asked for
a life sentence.
The evidence again was a witness testimony, with the star witness being a 42-year old
woman who lived close to the alley where the victim was dumped.
It was her testimony that got Spencer convicted again, and as you’ll find out soon, her
testimony was hardly concrete.
But she stood her ground, and according to reports, was very convincing when she described
what she had seen on the night of the crime.
This was Spencer and Mitchell dumping the body.
Mitchell was also convicted again, and unfortunately he would not live much longer anyway.
So, now Spencer is back in prison again, looking down a long road of 30-something years living
life behind bars as an innocent man.
His life now would be dedicated to proving his innocence, and this would be a long process.
Spencer got in touch with organizations that helped wrongly convicted men who were serving
time.
One such organization was named Centurion Ministries, and the people there knew that
the state has sent down an innocent man.
They built a case, interviewed over a hundred people, and then asked for a hearing.
This petition ended up on the desk of a criminal court judge in Dallas named Rick Magnis.
He said he wasn’t sure at first whether to have a hearing, mostly because the exoneration
wasn’t based on any kind of new DNA evidence.
This is often what gets innocent people freed.
But he later said in interviews that the more he read about the case he realized there had
been a lot of wrongs in Spencer’s conviction.
Twenty years after the crime Magnis granted an evidentiary hearing.
The witnesses came forward again, and this time two of them backed down.
But that woman who lived across from the alley didn’t, she stood firm again.
She said she had definitely seen Spencer.
As we said, there was a big problem with her testimony.
That’s because all those years later a forensic visual scientist was asked to watch a reenactment
of the body being dumped.
What that was, was people in the dark pretending to be the pair that dumped the body.
After this, there was no doubt that this woman could have seen anything other than a silhouette.
No way could she have clearly seen a face as she said she had done.
That forensic scientist said with the conditions as they were, a person could not have made
out a face any farther than 25 feet away.
But as it stood, the witness claiming to have seen the men who was standing closest to the
crime scene was 93 feet away.
Again, just no way could have any of those witnesses got a clear ID.
With this new evidence Judge Magnis said ok enough is enough, and he ordered a retrial
on the grounds of something called “actual innocence.”
As for Spencer, he said he was over the moon when he heard the news.
Not only would he get out, but he would clear his name, too.
In an interview he said, “I was very hopeful.
I thought that this is it.
I'm going home.”
That didn’t happen, though.
Spencer said at first he was hopeful that this retrial would take place within a few
weeks.
They passed, so then he thought maybe a few months, and they passed.
In fact, years passed and the only authority capable of granting a new trial, the Court
of Criminal Appeals, it seems did nothing at all.
Then in 2011.
Spence got some bad news.
There would be no retrial.
While a judge said that indeed if the new evidence had been presented at the first trial
it would have been unlikely that Spencer would have been convicted.
But that same judge said because Spencer hadn’t come up with any incontrovertible new evidence
proving he wasn’t there that night, such as CCTV footage or DNA that had never been
tested, there would be no trial.
The judge admitted that Spencer was likely innocent, but it didn’t matter, he didn’t
have the evidence to get that new trial.
His attorney now says she needs to start again; she needs to find this new evidence proving
her client’s innocence.
The problem of course is how do you find new evidence 28 years after the fact.
The woman across from the alley now won’t talk openly about the case.
Another witness died and another now says he didn’t get a clear look at Spencer.
This witness now says he felt pressured by the police to say it was Spencer.
So, that’s it.
The only thing saying Spencer is guilty is the testimony of a witness who its been proved
couldn’t have possibly seen Spencer that night.
Everyone seems to know the case stinks, but the fact is the justice system doesn’t seem
to provide any solutions to get Spencer out.
But there is more.
There was another witness, but this witness was never called.
She now says that she is “1000 percent sure” that the people she saw didn’t include Spencer.
What about that jailhouse informant?
Well, he now says that Spencer never told him he had committed that crime.
Records also show something very fishy.
The informant said in court that he had not received any benefit from giving that statement.
But this guy was looking at a 25 year sentence for aggravated robbery.
Guess what happened after he spoke to police and gave his testimony?
He walked out of prison after just more than a year.
Another person has come forward saying he knows who killed the man that night because
it was a friend of his who did it.
He admitted it to him.
This man did not come forward at the time because he didn’t want to rat on one of
his friends.
The man whose name was put forward is currently serving time for robbery and assault.
Investigators now say that police weren’t going after Spencer, but they just had a case
of what’s called “tunnel vision.”
They had a theory, and they looked only at the evidence that fit that theory.
Anything else was ignored.
Spencer now sits in his cell, a man in 50s wearing glasses, waiting and hoping.
But he doesn’t have too much hope left.
In an interview he said, “I'm just at a point where, I'm still hopeful, but at the
same time, it's like I'm stuck in a system.”
His story has been written about extensively in the American media, but it seems this man
really is stuck in the system.
He has been denied parole on each occasion he was up for it, and from what we can see
still waits in his cell to this day, waiting in vain for something to help get him out
of the web of American justice.
What do you think about this story?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Why Was This Prisoner Kept Locked Away In
Permanent Total Isolation?
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See you next time.