Tennessee Death Row Prisoner’s New Appeal Alleges Innocence, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and Ineffective Counsel

Jessie Dotson, a man sen­tenced to death for killing six peo­ple in 2008 in the Binghampton neigh­bor­hood of Memphis, Tennessee, has filed a peti­tion for a writ of a habeas cor­pus ask­ing a judge to vacate his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. His peti­tion alleges that he is inno­cent, that police coerced him to false­ly con­fess, and that a num­ber of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al and defense errors occurred at tri­al. Mr. Dotson has been on death row since 2008, when he was sen­tenced to death for the mur­ders of four adults, includ­ing his broth­er, and two chil­dren. Three addi­tion­al chil­dren sur­vived the attacks despite sus­tain­ing injuries. One of the three sur­vivors, Mr. Dotson’s 9‑year-old nephew, C. J. Dotson, iden­ti­fied him as the attack­er, pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny that defense coun­sel now say was unreliable.

Mr. Dotson’s appeal iden­ti­fies sev­er­al tri­al errors in addi­tion to the inef­fec­tive assis­tance of his coun­sel. Defense coun­sel now argue that the killings occurred as part of a gang retal­i­a­tion, not­ing that some of the vic­tims were armed and that Mr. Dotson’s broth­er had crossed gang mem­bers from the Gangster Disciples. The peti­tion alleges that the crime scene was char­ac­ter­is­tic of a ​“total black­out order,” which is an order to kill a target’s entire fam­i­ly. With this evi­dence point­ing away from Mr. Dotson, the peti­tion also alleges that police inten­tion­al­ly ignored and did not share infor­ma­tion with the defense that sup­port­ed this theory.

Of the 468 exhibits intro­duced at tri­al, none were linked to Mr. Dotson through DNA test­ing. Prosecutors relied heav­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of C.J. Dotson, who was stabbed in the head dur­ing the killings but sur­vived his wounds. He would even­tu­al­ly name Mr. Dotson as the per­son respon­si­ble for the killings, but Mr. Dotson’s new fil­ings argue that C.J.’s mem­o­ry had been ​“tam­pered” with by police offi­cers and that he was not in the right state of mind to iden­ti­fy any­one. The peti­tion also points to C.J.’s med­ical records indi­cat­ing he was on ​“mind-alter­ing med­ica­tions” when he was inter­viewed, includ­ing mor­phine, propo­fol, and hydrocodone and fen­tanyl. During C.J.’s first inter­view with a trained foren­sic child advo­cate, he named two sep­a­rate peo­ple as sus­pects and repeat­ed what he heard the sus­pects say. That inter­view was not com­plet­ed because the advo­cate believed that C.J. was too dis­tressed to con­tin­ue. In vio­la­tion of estab­lished pro­to­col, police Sergeant Caroline Mason then ques­tioned C.J., and the peti­tion alleges the Sgt. Mason told C.J. about gifts he would receive if he named a sus­pect. Linda Steele, an FBI expert, inter­viewed C.J. four days after he spoke with Sgt. Mason, yet her report was nev­er dis­closed to the defense. Prosecutors also failed to dis­close to Mr. Dotson’s tri­al attor­neys that C.J.’s psy­chol­o­gist said the child’s mem­o­ry was unreliable.

Mr. Dotson’s peti­tion also describes the sev­en-hour-inter­ro­ga­tion he endured while being ​“sleep deprived and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed,” all the while main­tain­ing his inno­cence. At sev­er­al points, Mr. Dotson invoked his right to remain silent and asked for an attor­ney, which the police repeat­ed­ly ignored as they con­tin­ued the inter­ro­ga­tion. The peti­tion details that

Despite this con­fes­sion, much of Mr. Dotson’s state­ments do not align with the crime scene evi­dence. The infor­ma­tion elicit­ed in Mr. Dotson’s con­fes­sion came from infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to him by police. Defense coun­sel fur­ther allege that Mr. Dotson was not made aware of his Miranda rights before he signed his ​“con­fes­sion.”