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Claude Lee Wilkerson Inmate Number 648
On January 23, 1978, three men working at a Jewelry store in Houston were kidnapped. They were taken to a farm in Shiner and shot and killed.
Wilkerson was one of four men arrested in 1978 in connection with the slayings of three people who were taken hostage during a jewelry store robbery in Texas. The victims’ bodies were later found in a shallow grave, according to a 1987 Associated Press article.
Wilkerson was convicted of capital murder in the deaths of one of the victims and sentenced to death. He entered a Texas state prison in 1979, Texas Department of Public Safety records show.
He was release on bond, however, in 1983 after the Texas Court of Appeals, in a split decision, reversed Wilkerson’s conviction, ruling police had illegally obtained his confession because he didn’t waive his Miranda rights.
A Texas state district court judge later agreed and tossed out the evidence that accompanied the confession.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear prosecutors’ appeal.
With no confession and no evidence to build a case on, prosecutors in 1987 dismissed the charges against Wilkerson, according to the Associated Press article.
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/artic...s-on-death-row
If anyone wants to read the news article about Wilkerson's release here it is.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?n...,5030781&hl=en
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