People we’ve helped exonerate
Claude Garrett
Released in 2022 after spending nearly 30 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He died five months later, a free and innocent man.
Case history
In the early morning hours of February 24, 1992, a fire broke out in the small cinder block home in Old Hickory, Tennessee, where Claude, then 35, lived with his fiancée, Lorie Lance. Claude woke to the smell of smoke, roused Lorie, and tried to lead her out through the front door. She broke away and ran toward the back of the house. Claude escaped through the front, suffering burns to his face, hand, and arm. He was jumping up and down in the yard when neighbors came running. He told the first firefighters through the door that Lorie was still inside. Her body was found nearly an hour later, in the utility room at the rear of the house. She had died of smoke inhalation.
The investigation that followed would be shaped by two incorrect things: a fire investigator’s visual impression of burn patterns on the floor, and a firefighter’s changing account of whether the utility room door was locked.
Based on the investigator’s conclusion that the floor showed “pour patterns”, a sign, he said, of accelerant being deliberately spread to start a fire, Claude was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Every debris sample collected by the fire department had tested negative for accelerant. The investigator’s own samples, collected more than twelve hours after the fire was extinguished and after the scene had been disturbed, tested positive for kerosene. A kerosene-soaked bedspread appeared near the utility room door that at least four prior investigators had apparently overlooked. And a detective’s report documented that the first firefighter to find Lorie’s body had told him the door was unlocked, the opposite of what that firefighter would testify to at trial.
Claude maintained his innocence from the moment of his arrest. In August 1993, a jury convicted him of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
He would spend the next three decades fighting, through two trials, multiple appeals, and years of post-conviction petitions, as fire science slowly caught up to the truth of his case.
The Court is satisfied that Petitioner has presented clear and convincing evidence showing that no reasonable jury would have convicted Claude Garrett of felony murder in light of the new scientific evidence. Garrett has shown actual innocence.
Judge Monte Watkins Davidson County Criminal Court
Building the case for innocence
In November 2021, Tennessee Innocence Project attorneys Jessica Van Dyke and Jason Gichner, alongside Assistant Federal Defender Michael Holley, filed a motion to reopen Claude’s petition for post-conviction relief. They were joined, on the prosecution side, by the Davidson County District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit, which conducted its own independent reinvestigation and reached the same conclusion.
The case against Claude had rested almost entirely on the testimony of ATF agent James Cooper, who had concluded by visual inspection alone that the burn patterns on the living room floor were “pour patterns”, proof that someone had deliberately spread and ignited an accelerant. By 2021, that methodology had been thoroughly and specifically repudiated by the scientific community.
The TIP motion catalogued four major developments in fire science that had occurred since Claude’s second trial in 2003. In 2004, the National Fire Protection Association’s NFPA 921 guide, the established standard for fire investigation, explicitly told investigators to stop using the term “pour pattern” altogether, because studies had demonstrated that fire patterns from burning accelerants are not visually distinguishable from those caused by other factors. From 2005 to 2007, ATF-funded studies on flashover, the phenomenon where a room becomes so hot it ignites entirely, revealed fundamental uncertainty about determining a fire’s origin after the fact. A 2013 study found that ignitable liquids burn too briefly to produce the deep charring photographed on Garrett’s living room floor. And a 2019 experiment by fire investigator Dr. Candace Ashby, designed to recreate conditions in the house, demonstrated that the utility room lock would have been in the open, not closed, position at the time of the fire.
Fire expert John Lentini, who had been part of Claude’s earlier post-conviction efforts, provided a report for the defense. A team of internationally recognized fire scientists working together as the Tetrahedron Committee, collectively concluded that the fire could not be classified as arson and that Cooper’s investigation was both inadequate and wrong. The Conviction Review Unit’s’s own review agreed: Cooper’s testimony had been “emotionally charged, filled with inflammatory overstatements, mischaracterizations of the evidence, and assumptions regarding Garrett’s intent.” Stripped of it, the CRU concluded, the case against Claude Garrett was nonexistent.
Exoneration
On May 6, 2022, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins signed the order vacating Claude’s conviction. “The Court is satisfied that Petitioner has presented clear and convincing evidence showing that no reasonable jury would have convicted Claude Garrett of felony murder in light of the new scientific evidence,” he wrote. “Garrett has shown actual innocence.”
Four days later, on May 10, 2022, the prosecution dismissed the case. Claude Garrett walked out of prison, nearly 30 years after he first entered it.
Tragically, he had only five months of freedom. He spent them doing a lot of living. Most importantly with the people he loved, and above all with his daughter, Deana. Claude died on October 31, 2022.
The Tennessee Innocence Project mourned him with honesty about what his case represented: “Claude knew his case better than anyone, and the Tennessee Innocence Project was merely a small part of his 30-year quest to clear his name. We take small comfort in the fact that Claude was found innocent by a court earlier in 2022.”
Jason Gichner, who had worked alongside Claude to achieve that freedom, had said just weeks before Claude’s death: “There is an urgency to our work. At the Tennessee Innocence Project, we recognize that clients aren’t the only ones with hope that they will one day be released, their families share that hope, too.”
Claude Garrett’s name was cleared. His daughter knows the truth. And the fire science that condemned him has since been recognized as junk, too late for him, but not for others who will come after.
In Memoriam
1956 – 2022
It is with profound sadness that we mourn the loss of Claude Garrett. Claude was exonerated in May 2022, after nearly 30 years fighting for his freedom. During his five months of freedom, Claude did a lot of living. His most important time was spent with family and friends, especially his daughter, who he loved fiercely.
Words cannot capture our feelings or make sense of this loss. Claude knew his case better than anyone, and the Tennessee Innocence Project was merely a small part of his 30-year quest to clear his name. We take small comfort in the fact that Claude was found innocent by a court earlier in 2022.
In the summer of 2022, Claude’s daughter, Deana, had generously agreed to share their story for our annual video. During filming in September, Jason Gichner stated, “There is an urgency to our work. At the Tennessee Innocence Project, we recognize that clients aren’t the only ones with hope that they will one day be released – their families share that hope, too.” We had no idea how those words would impact us just a few months later. With Deana’s permission, we are continuing to share their story.
Claude will remain in our thoughts and hearts.
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