From Emmett Till to Pervis Payne — Black Men in America Are Still Killed for Crimes They Didn’t Commit
Innocence Project August 2020
In 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy named Emmett Till was brutally murdered after being accused of sexually harassing a white woman in a grocery store. The two white men who killed him were found not guilty by an all-white, all-male jury. Decades later, the woman admitted that she lied about Emmett harassing her. That same racism and inequality still persists in the US today — especially in our justice system. Black and brown men continue to be perceived as dangerous, violent, and hypersexual. Those same racist stereotypes were used to convict Pervis Payne of a crime he’s always said he didn’t commit.
Why is DNA testing being denied?
Despite the availability of multiple pieces of untested evidence that could help prove Pervis Payne’s innocence, Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich announced that she opposes DNA testing in his case on July 30 and filed papers asking the court to deny him testing. Pervis’ legal team filed a reply brief in support of their petition for post-conviction DNA analysis and requested that the Shelby County Criminal Court order tests for more than a dozen pieces of crime scene evidence that have never been subjected to DNA analysis.
Choices Interlinking 