Wade’s greatest talent might have been self-mythologizing, a skill that shaped how the press depicted him. In his 1994 book Big D: Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity in the 20th Century, longtime Dallas Times Herald reporter Darwin Payne promoted this legend, describing Wade as “one of the nation’s most famous and successful district attorneys, noted for a sensational record of courtroom triumphs and for developing a large number of aggressive prosecutors.”
That “sensational” record, however, rested on the racist exclusion of Black and brown jurors, threats and abuse of suspects outside the presence of defense attorneys and the repeated unethical suppression of exculpatory evidence.
The case of Tommy Lee Walker, an innocent 19-year-old Black man who died in the electric chair after being convicted of the murder of a white woman, captures all the horrors of Wade’s now-whitewashed career. Overwhelming evidence of misconduct by Wade’s office and the Dallas police in that more than 70-year-old case impelled the Dallas County Commissioners Court to posthumously proclaim Walker’s innocence on Jan. 21.
Venice Parker died after being stabbed on her way home from work on Sept. 30, 1953. One police officer later claimed that she said, “a Negro took me under the bridge and cut my throat,” although medical experts later testified that she would have been unable to speak because of her injuries. After hassling a multitude of Black men for four months, Dallas police arrested Walker, who became a father the night of Parker’s slaying. Police and Wade’s office ignored nine eyewitnesses who said that they were with Walker at the time of the crime.
Wade later tricked the terrified young man into signing a confession after he was threatened with a beating by homicide detective Will Fritz, who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan into the 1920s. Wade lied to Walker, saying that if he signed the confession, the district attorney wouldn’t seek the death penalty. Wade did not just ask the all-white jury for a death sentence, but he also said in his closing arguments that, “I’d be glad to walk the last mile with you, Walker. And I’d be glad to pull the switch on you.” Texas executed the 21-year-old on May 12, 1956.