After decades in prison for murder, Miami man hears words of freedom: ‘Actually innocent’

After more than three decades in prison, Thomas Raynard James sat in a packed Miami courtroom, shackled and wearing a red inmate jumpsuit, on paper still convicted of murder. Just past 11:30 a.m., James heard the words he himself had been repeating for years.

“We have determined that Thomas Raynard James is actually innocent,” a prosecutor told the judge.

James betrayed no emotions. But inside, he said later, it all felt unreal as the judge undid his conviction, and the State Attorney’s Office officially dropped the case

“If there weren’t so many people in there, I’d probably have fainted,” James said. “It actually hit me emotionally. I realized it was actually happening.”

With that, James was a free man, 55 years old and ready to re-emerge into a new world of freedom. A couple hours later, James showered and changed into black pants and T-shirt, a gray jacket and brand new sneakers.

James walked into the State Attorney’s Office fourth floor. Supporters erupted into cheers. He posed for photos with his attorney, Natlie Figgers, and State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, who wrapped her arms around him. What’s next? a reporter asked.

“The world,” he said.

James’ freedom concluded a long and complicated legal odyssey that started with his arrest in 1990 for the murder of a Coconut Grove man, years of unsuccessful appeals to the courts and the media, and finally an exhaustive and much-publicized investigation that ended with the star witness finally admitting she got it wrong.

The decision was nonetheless bittersweet all around.

James’ elderly mother, Doris Strong, watched from a wheelchair, having lost decades of time with her son. And the frustrated children of Francis McKinnon, the man gunned down in 1990, attended the hearing, not convinced that James was innocent.

“Mr. James, I don’t want to see you in jail if you’re innocent,” Charles McKinnon, 63, told James in court. “But the evidence we’ve been presented with so far, it makes it impossible for the family and myself to support the state’s position.”

James’ case has become publicized over the past year after an investigation by GQ magazine concluded that detectives initially confused Thomas for another man who shared the same name. The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office Justice Project, which had been reviewing the case, spent about a year poring over documents, re-interviewing dozens of previous and new witnesses to try and sort through conflicting stories, and testing samples for possible DNA matches.

The murder of McKinnon happened on Jan. 17, 1990.

A father of seven, he was a Vietnam veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after the war, his sons said. That night, he was home with his wife and his three stepchildren when two men burst into the apartment at 135 S. Dixie Highway.

One of the gunmen, who was unmasked, fired his weapon once into McKinnon’s head.

One witness initially told investigators that one of the two men running from the building was known as “Dog,” and that a second man who might have been with him was named Thomas James.

Tipsters also named “Dog,” whose real name was Vincent Williams, and James as the men involved.

Williams was not arrested. A Miami-Dade homicide detective honed in on Thomas Raynard James, who was in jail some months later on an unrelated case, putting his mug shot in a photo lineup.

The key witness was Dorothy Walton, McKinnon’s stepdaughter, who identified James as the gunman. She was the only witness to identify him as the shooter, while one other witness said James was seen running away.

At the trial in January 1991, Walton told jurors that James, then 23, was the man who gunned down her stepfather during the robbery. “Just as I was born into this world, I will not forget that man’s face,” Dorothy Walton told the Miami Herald at the time. “I looked in his eyes. He knows it.”

The jury convicted James, despite the lack of any corroborating physical evidence.

The ensuing years proved to be long and frustrating for James.

James spent years filing motions proclaiming his innocence, and the courts consistently denied his appeals. The Innocence Project of Florida, on two occasions, reviewed the files but could not “proceed with his case” because there was no DNA that might exonerate him, according to the state’s motion filed in court Wednesday.

The project also interviewed the other Thomas James, who it turned out had an alibi for the murder: He was behind bars at the time of the crime. But he acknowledged to GQ’s Tristram Korten, a veteran South Florida journalist and author, that he was friends with people who had planned the robbery and had even cased the apartment days before the shooting.

He later told GQ that he knew the other James was innocent of the Grove murder.

“Let the other Thomas James know I feel for him. I’m sorry this happened,” he later told GQ.

It was in recent years that attorney Figgers began working to try and clear James, whose supporters started a website imploring “Justice for Jay.” On her legal team: Kionne McGhee, a former Miami-Dade prosecutor who is now a county commissioner, and Mark Rankin.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office Justice Project began pulling case files in early 2021, and soon began working with Figgers to piece together the convoluted chain of events contained in dusty files.

Ultimately, the decision to exonerate James crystallized with the changing story of Walton.

For years, she did not back off her testimony to defense investigators, but admitted she had some doubts. Last year, she repeatedly blew off interview attempts with the State Attorney’s Office. Then, finally in April, she said in a sworn statement with prosecutors that despite her previous testimony, she was wrong in identifying James as the triggerman.

Walton was “unable to explain to us when or why she first came to this realization,” Justice Project prosecutors Christine Zahralban, Reid Rubin and Don Horn wrote in their motion to the court.

Said James: “I thank her for finally allowing her conscience to get the best of her. I forgave her a long time ago because I don’t think she done it intentionally.”

Zahralban, a deputy chief assistant state attorney, also wrote that Williams was most likely the triggerman. But he can’t be charged.

“Equally painful is the knowledge that the likely suspect ... died and cannot be brought to justice,” Fernandez Rundle said.

The mother of Williams’ son, Catrina Knight, told investigators that he had told family members about how he pulled the trigger. Another man named Derrick Evans may be the second person involved, although there isn’t enough evidence to charge him, the motion said.

“While we are heartbroken for the victim’s family, based upon our investigation we are legally, ethically, and morally required to take this action at this time,” Zahralban announced in court on Wednesday morning.

Circuit Judge Miguel de la O accepted the dismissal of the conviction, and noted that the reliability of eyewitness testimony has been studied at length and that he himself has presided over several similar exonerations.

“Easily over 50 percent of exonerations that have occurred, not just in Florida but nationwide, they are all based on eyewitness identification, especially single eyewitness and where the witness doesn’t really know the assailant,” Judge de la O said.

Hours later, after the paperwork was processed, James walked free.

His immediate plans were modest: getting a chicken dinner with his family, and spending time with his mother.

But James said he won’t sit still, and hopes to start a foundation and work with community organizations that help wrongfully incarcerated people. His legal team hopes to sue the state of Florida for his time behind bars.

And, he wants to get a job. “I have to earn money so I can be a productive member of a society,” James said. “I’m not going to be a burden.”

This story was originally published April 27, 2022 at 6:55 AM.