Joyce Watkins

2022 year of exoneration

27 years in prison

24 years saved

Joyce Watkins was released from prison on October 15, 2015, after serving 27 years for a crime she didn’t commit. She is the first black woman to be exonerated in Tennessee.

Case history

In June 1987, Joyce, then 39 years old, and her boyfriend Charlie Dunn made a late-night drive to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to pick up her four-year-old great-niece, B.B., at the insistence of the child’s caretaker. When they arrived back in Nashville, Joyce noticed something was wrong. She called B.B.’s mother in Georgia, who told her to wait through the night. By morning, it was clear the child needed urgent care. Joyce took her to the hospital.

Doctors discovered a severe head injury and signs of sexual assault. B.B. died the following day. The medical examiner, Dr. Gretel Harlan, concluded, using what would later be proven to be scientifically baseless reasoning, that the injuries had occurred during the nine hours B.B. was in Joyce and Charlie’s care. That single, flawed opinion became the cornerstone of the prosecution’s case.

Joyce and Charlie had no criminal records. They had cooperated fully with police, allowed investigators into their home, and brought the child in for medical attention themselves. None of it mattered. On August 5, 1988, a jury convicted them both of first-degree murder and aggravated rape. They were sentenced to life in prison.

From the beginning, there were reasons to question the verdict. Evidence pointing toward another suspect, including a Kentucky Department of Social Services report documenting prior injuries to B.B. and a timeline suggesting the harm occurred before the child ever left Fort Campbell, was either ignored or never disclosed to the defense. The jury never heard it.

Ms. Watkins with Executive Director, Jason Gichner.
Photo credit: CNN

These kinds of cases where people are wrongfully convicted don't need to be, and shouldn't be, adversarial. We welcome the opportunity to work with prosecutors across the state to identify and do something about wrongful convictions.

Jason Gichner Executive Director

Building the case for innocence

In 2020, Joyce Watkins reached out, asking Tennessee Innocence Project to review her case. TIP attorneys agreed to investigate.

What TIP found was a conviction built on a crumbling foundation. Dr. Harlan’s central argument on the timing of the injury had no basis in forensic science. TIP brought the case to the Davidson County District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU). The CRU conducted an independent investigation and uncovered additional evidence of innocence..

TIP retained two independent medical experts: Dr. Adele Lewis, Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Tennessee, and Dr. Shilpa Reddy, a Pediatric Neurologist at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital. Both concluded that Dr. Harlan’s testimony was wrong. The injuries to the child occurred before she was ever in the care of Joyce Watkins or Charlie Dunn.

Joyce Watkins

Exoneration

On November 10, 2021, TIP filed a motion to reopen the petition for post-conviction relief. On the same day, the Davidson County DA’s office filed its own notice of intent to vacate the convictions — a rare, unified front from both the defense and the prosecution in the pursuit of justice.

On January 6, 2022, Davidson County Criminal Court Judge Angelita Blackshear Dalton vacated the convictions. “The evidence presented at trial and post-conviction in this case was misleading, false, and uncorrected as to material issues,” she wrote. She noted specifically that the undisclosed social worker’s report directly contradicted the prosecution’s narrative about the sheets — one of its key pieces of circumstantial evidence.

On January 12, 2022 — exactly seven years to the day after Charlie Dunn died in prison, never having seen his name cleared — charges were dismissed against both Joyce Watkins and Charlie Dunn. Joyce was 74 years old.

Judge Blackshear Dalton removed her mask to address Joyce directly in the courtroom: “Miss Watkins, the charge against you is dismissed.”

Joyce’s response was quiet and hard-won.

Joyce Watkins is the first Black woman ever exonerated in Tennessee. Today, she is a nationally recognized advocate and ambassador for wrongful conviction reform — and serves as a member of the Tennessee Innocence Project’s Board of Directors.

I would just like to thank everyone that helped me prove my innocence, it’s been a long struggle, but I want to thank the DA’s office, I want to thank the Tennessee Innocence Project, and I want to thank all of the people for their prayers, and… I’m just happy to be out of this mess, which has cost me half of my life for nothing. But I’ll get over it. I thank God for me being able to do this. Thank you!

Joyce Watkins