74-year-old Black woman exonerated after serving 27 years in prison

After serving 27 years in prison for crimes she did not commit, 74-year-old Joyce Watkins of Nashville, Tenn., was exonerated this month, her convictions in the murder and sexual assault of her 4-year-old grandniece overturned.

Video Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JASON GICHNER: It's bittersweet, right? I mean, there's no way to ever give them justice for what happened. But it certainly is very meaningful and important that people recognize that they were wrongfully convicted, and the whole world knows that they're innocent. Their families have always known it. They've always known it. But it's important that everybody knows it. The whole story itself is tragic. The fact that we've gotten to where we are is a result that we can celebrate.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Initially what happened was is that you had a medical examiner that gave an opinion that said the injuries that were the main issue in this case had to have happened during the very brief window of window of time that the child was with Joyce and Charlie. Because she had only been with them for nine hours. They had picked her up close to midnight, and by the next morning Joyce brought her to the hospital. And nobody really thought either one of them was a suspect initially. It wasn't really looking at them.

But then the medical examiner had this opinion that well, these injuries had to have happened based on things that I'm seeing during the autopsy. But she was just getting it wrong. I mean, she was looking for a certain type of cell to appear in the brain slides that would never be there. So she said because I saw a lack of these particular cells that means it happened within the last 12 hours. And there's just no truth to support that.

All of the world-renowned doctors who have looked at it for us now, and a couple of whom offered evidence at the hearing, said no. There's nothing to support what she said. In fact, it's just flat out wrong.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

And I think the fact that faulty science was presented is a major problem. But there was a mischaracterization of these people. They were presented to the jury as part of a narrative that there was something wrong with them. They were monsters. They would do something like this.

These are good people. If you went back to the late '80s and you just looked at Joyce and Charlie, I mean, who are they? They're folks with full-time jobs who have never been in trouble before. Joyce owned her own home. Charlie had raised a bunch of children. They worked five days a week at the same company for years, full-time shifts. I mean, just good people.

When Joyce was arrested for this, she was in the process of adopting a baby. I mean, this was just a life-changing, and in many ways ruining, event. So it was our office jointly with the district attorney's office asking the court to grant our request and vacate these convictions. And when we do bring them cases they take them seriously.

One of the reasons the litigation on this case moved relatively quickly is because when we brought this to them they did their own independent investigation and they got on board and they supported it. And when we went to court it wasn't an adversarial proceeding. I would love for other prosecutors around the state, and really everywhere, to think about wrongful convictions as something that does not need to be adversarial.

There's no reason that we can't work openly and honestly with the prosecutors office on these cases. It should be in everybody's best interest to identify cases where folks are wrongfully convicted and to do something about them. I mean, this isn't a political issue. This isn't a controversial issue, right? Who wants innocent people in prison for a crime they didn't commit? Nobody.

I think you're starting to really see advancements in Tennessee within the last year, and I think there are reasons for that. First of all, the organization where I work, the Tennessee Innocence Project, is the first full-time innocence organization in the state that is entirely devoted to representing folks like Joyce and Charlie. This is what we do full time, and having people on the ground thinking about these cases, working on them, is making a difference and will continue to make a difference. And we're grateful for the collaboration with the district attorney's office.

But she lost 27 years of her life. Charlie lost 27 years of his life. His kids and grandkids grew up with people thinking that their father and grandfather was a murderer. You can't fix that. It means so much to her personally to be exonerated. She leads a very quiet life. She's not on the computer. She doesn't read the newspaper. She doesn't have a social media account.

So it's not as if Joyce was concerned about this because she was worried about what everybody was saying. I mean, this was for herself. But she was very clear and very driven that she was never going to let this go. I think it hit her a little bit then, and I think more so as a little bit of time has passed, that "I did it. It took 35 years but I did it."

JOYCE WATKINS: It's been a long struggle. But I want to thank the DA's office. I want to thank Mr. Gichner here for The Innocence Project, and I want to thank all the people for their prayers.

[MUSIC PLAYING]