Locked up 44 years in shootings, Jacksonville man's case dropped after state attorney review

A man locked up for almost 45 years for a robbery-shooting at a Jacksonville produce store had his conviction erased Wednesday because a key witness was hypnotized before testifying against him.

Circuit Judge Lindsay Tygart vacated the 1976 attempted-murder conviction against Willie L. Williams Jr., who had been freed from prison on parole in 2020 and had asked prosecutors to help clear his name.

“I am so thankful that I can finally put this injustice behind me and move on with my life,” Williams, now 79, said in a release from the Innocence Project of Florida, a legal nonprofit that challenges improper convictions.

“I always knew that I was not the shooter but I didn’t have the evidence to properly defend myself. I am so grateful to the State Attorney’s Office for diligently reviewing my case and discovering the key evidence to show that I was wrongfully convicted,” the statement quoted Williams saying.

Florida’s Supreme Court has ruled since the conviction that “hypnotically refreshed memory” is unreliable and inadmissible at trial, said State Attorney’s Office spokesman David Chapman.

Because the evidence wasn’t admissible, prosecutors weren’t filing charges again, Chapman said.

Before his parole, Williams had been serving life in prison after being convicted of two counts of robbery and two of attempted murder for shootings that happened Oct. 8, 1975 inside Weconnett Produce near Wesconnett Boulevard and Timuquana Road.

After 43 years: FREE AT LAST

Two men had driven to the business and one waited outside while the other entered the store, where police said a woman who was the only employee was shot in the head after handing over about $50, according to court records. A man who thought the bangs he heard were hammering walked in during the holdup and was also made to give up his wallet, then shot in the head as well.

The robber got back to the car, but police chased it to Beaver Street downtown, where Williams was arrested trying to run, a police report said. Another man, Alfred Mitchell, fled into a house and shot himself fatally in the head, the report said.

Williams told police he had given Mitchell a ride to the Westside because Mitchell said he needed to pick up a check and that he had no idea a robbery would happen.

But both people who were shot at the store survived and a jury convicted Williams after the male victim identified him as the gunman in what the judge for that trial called “clear and unequivocal testimony,” according to court files.

When the State Attorney’s Office revisited the case in 2021, however, staff in its conviction integrity review division found “previously undisclosed and exculpatory information” about police hypnotizing the shooting victim, Innocence Project attorneys told Tygart in October.

The Innocence Project filing said the State Attorney’s Office contacted the man who had been shot and were told “his memory ‘blacked out’ after being shot and he could not remember anything about the robbery prior to being hypnotized.” The filing said Williams’ original defense lawyer told the State Attorney’s Office he was never told the shooting victim was hypnotized, but that prosecutors’ records from the 1976 trial and later contained two notes indicating prosecutors were aware.

Legal knots: Overturned convictions raise questions

Williams’ lawyers argued that not sharing information about the hypnosis violated his right to know about evidence the government knows that might point to his innocence, undermining the whole trial.

The State Attorney’s Office told Williams the findings from its review in May, and Innocence Project Legal Director Brandon Scheck praised current prosecutors for coming forward with information that should have been shared long ago.

“It is important that when it becomes clear that a conviction was procured through unconstitutional means, that all parts of the system — the state, defense and court — move swiftly to right that,” Scheck said.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Behind bars 44 years, Jacksonville man, 79, has shooting case dropped