TULSA, Okla. — After serving 24 years in prison for a rape he says he didn’t commit, a Tulsa County judge ruled William Henry Jamerson no longer has to be listed on a sex offender registry.
Judge David Guten is the same judge who threw out Jamerson’s conviction earlier this year after Jamerson’s attorney, Dan Smolen, searched the Tulsa Police Department property room and found the decades-buried DNA evidence.
2 News' Erin Christy started digging into this case after talking to Smolen.
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The state did not object to the request. Jamerson was quiet after the ruling but told 2 News he was relieved.
“Feel better, better than I was feeling, blessed,” he said.
Kayleen Dubbs has plenty to say.
In 1991, someone raped the pregnant 16-year-old outside a Tulsa restaurant (Ma Belle’s) where she worked. She feels the police coerced her into pinning it on Jamerson.
“They gave me his name, they showed me photos of him, they groomed me,” she explained. “The way they do it—it makes you feel like you are wrong.”
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For years, she questioned the investigation. "But who am I supposed to go to if the DA and the cops are involved in all of this?” she asked.
She said investigators convinced her to stay disconnected from the case. She did not even go to the trial.
“I wasn’t allowed to watch the news, I couldn’t read the newspaper, weird, right?” She said. She said that felt like something told to a juror, not the victim.
Dubbs said witnesses named possible suspects as restaurant employees who didn’t show up for work the night of the crimes.
“There were two guys that called in [to work] that night,” Dubbs said. “There was a guy who raped me, and there was a guy that robbed the place. They [detectives] never interviewed them.”
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“Now that I am older and think back on all of this, I see through everything they did,” she said. “I am going to stand here until it is over, and I am not going anywhere.”
Jamerson’s attorneys said getting his name removed from the sex offender registry was unnecessary red tape.
“That should have been done by the DOC [Department of Corrections] the next day because they knew all about it,” said Allen Smallwood, one of Jamerson’s attorneys. "This is just the beginning of justice that we hopefully will be able to obtain for him at the end of the day."
Jamerson’s attorneys are filing a civil lawsuit. Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler is appealing the overturned conviction.
The Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office sent 2 News this statement:
“The matter of Mr. Jamerson’s previous conviction following a jury trial is on appeal. However, given the ruling of the District Court, at this time the requirements for sexual offender registration may be moot. We will abide by the rulings of the appellate courts – whatever they may be.”
Also at the hearing, another one of Jamerson’s attorneys, Dan Smolen.
He asked the judge to unseal the Tulsa Police Department’s Internal Affairs investigation that led to the demotion of the police officer in charge of the property room where Smolen found Jamerson’s DNA. Smolen believes the evidence was deliberately hidden.
He hopes documents will shed light on who may have ordered officers to hide the DNA.
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