Active Cases
Andrew Hayes
Andrew Wayne Hayes has been in prison since 2010, convicted of the first-degree murder of Danny Harris, a crime he did not commit. A Memphis man with an intellectual disability, Andrew was interrogated for 27 hours before confessing to a crime the physical evidence contradicts. He has spent almost twenty years behind bars, separated from his family and his son. TIP has been working alongside Andrew for years to prove his innocence, and the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office has now concluded that he was wrongfully convicted.
The case: what happened
On August 20, 2007, 55-year-old Danny Harris, an Air National Guard veteran, was killed in his Memphis apartment. His body wasn’t discovered until two months later, on October 26, 2007.
Police focused their attention on Andrew Hayes because he had been living in a home where the actual killers had rented a room. When officers brought Andrew in for questioning on November 2, 2007, he waited alone in an interview room for hours. After a 27-hour interrogation, Andrew, a man with cognitive disabilities, who had only completed seventh grade, signed a confession that did not match the facts of the case. That confession became the centerpiece of the state’s case against him.
In 2010, a Shelby County jury convicted Andrew Hayes of first-degree felony murder and aggravated robbery. The trial court imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. One of the actual killers had already pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life as well.
Problems with the conviction
The confession that sent Andrew Hayes to prison was riddled with errors. He told police there was no blood at the scene, crime scene photos show blood and blood spatter across multiple walls. He said the murder happened upstairs, the victim lived in a one-floor apartment. He said he struck the victim on the back of the head, the victim had no such injuries. He said the murder occurred two and a half weeks before the interrogation, the victim had been dead for months.
Meanwhile, at trial, one of the actual murderers, Tammy Vance, testified that Andrew Hayes had nothing to do with the murder. She told the jury it was her daughter Sarah Lucas who had beaten Harris to death with a hammer, and that she had pled guilty to protect Sarah from prosecution. Sarah Lucas, whose outstanding warrants for drug possession and prostitution had been cleared by prosecutors in exchange for her testimony, took the stand and denied all involvement, a claim her own family would later contradict.
In the years following Andrew’s conviction, witnesses from Sarah Lucas’s family came forward to describe her confessions to the crime, the financial arrangement between mother and daughter to ensure Tammy took the fall, and Sarah’s history of violence and dishonesty. An expert report from Dr. Jeffery Neuschatz detailed the interrogation conditions that can produce scientifically unreliable confessions, conditions that were present throughout Andrew’s 27-hour interview.
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Jessica Van Dyke Legal Director & Co-Founder
TIP’s involvement
Tennessee Innocence Project has represented Andrew Hayes for several years, investigating the case alongside his legal team. That work eventually drew the attention of the Shelby County District Attorney’s Justice Review Unit, which launched its own investigation.
On January 15, 2026, DA Steve Mulroy announced publicly that his office had concluded Andrew Hayes was wrongfully convicted, and that his office would not oppose a petition to vacate the conviction. “The wrong person is behind bars,” Mulroy said, “and we need to hold the right person accountable.” Prosecutors simultaneously charged Sarah Lucas Rydell, Tammy Vance’s daughter, with facilitation of first-degree murder. She was extradited from Oklahoma to Memphis in February 2026; she died shortly before her scheduled arraignment.
Sarah Lucas’s death removes one avenue of accountability, but the DA’s office has affirmed it does not anticipate her passing will affect Andrew’s exoneration. TIP Executive Director Jason Gichner has stated: “Andrew Hayes is innocent, and the Tennessee Innocence Project is looking forward to our day in court so everybody can learn the truth.”
A petition to vacate Andrew’s conviction is currently pending before the court.
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