Legal Juice
Is this justice? In 1987, Jimmy Lee Page was on trial in Austin, Texas for murder. A jury acquitted him (with several of them even shaking his hand.) Yet Page is still in jail for that very same murder. Back in 1975, Page was convicted of killing his friend (according to Page, he and his friend were shooting beer cans when Page accidentally grazed his friend’s thigh, then continued shooting when his friend tried to retaliate) and sentenced to life in jail. He was paroled in 1986. So how can he still be in jail for a crime he didn’t commit?
According to the parole board, he did commit the crime. They heard from only one witness, a police detective. Amazingly, that’s all it takes. Despite having been acquitted by the jury, Mr. Page has been in jail ever since for committing that very same crime. Last year, 91 other parolees in Texas met the same fate. After either being acquitted in court or having the charges dropped, they were returned to jail anyway.
As for Mr. Page, who has been denied parole 12 times: “It can just go on for the next 20 years. It’s been hard. It’s not the time. Doing time for no reason — that’s hard.”