April Frazier Camara was just 8 years old when the arrest of Pervis Payne, then 20, shocked her small West Tennessee community outside Shelby County. Frazier Camara’s family knew the Paynes; her mother attended the church where Pervis’ father Carl was a pastor, and Frazier Camara knew Pervis’ sisters Tyrasha and Rolanda.
The case against Payne carried echoes of America’s racist history that did not go unheard by the Black adults around Frazier Camara. Payne was a young Black man accused of the murders of a white woman named Charisse Christopher and her 2-year-old daughter Lacie Jo in 1987. Prosecutors relied heavily on circumstantial evidence and portrayed Payne as a drug-using predator who attacked the family after Christopher rejected his sexual advance. But Payne has always maintained his innocence, saying that he came upon the horrifying murder scene while checking to see if his girlfriend was at her apartment across the hall.
Speaking to the Scene more than 30 years later, Frazier Camara says she still remembers sitting in the beauty shop and hearing grown-ups talk about the case. They couldn’t imagine that Pervis, who had no prior criminal history, had committed the crime, and they frequently discussed the glaring racial dynamic of the case.
“I just remember being a very young Black girl in Tipton County and just hearing the community of my parents and family talk about — not only did they not think he did it, but just the fact that he was convicted from day one because it was a Black man accused of killing a white woman, and her [child],” Frazier Camara says. “As a child hearing that growing up and actually seeing his family fight for his innocence and never being heard? It led me to where I am today.”
Where she is today is a couple weeks into her new role as president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal Aid and Defender Association. Frazier Camara was recently in Nashville for the organization’s annual conference. Payne is on death row, and his attorneys are still fighting to prove his innocence — DNA testing results in January showed male DNA from an unknown third party on key evidence including the murder weapon — but also to convince the courts or the governor that he should not be executed because of his intellectual disability. They have said in court documents that Payne has a functioning IQ of 68 and should be included among the group of people whom the U.S. Supreme Court has said cannot be put to death. In April, the state legislature passed a bill creating a procedure through which a court could determine whether that is the case. Payne’s hearing on the matter is scheduled for Dec. 13. He was scheduled to be executed almost a year ago, on Dec. 3, until Gov. Bill Lee granted him a reprieve due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tennessee Supreme Court has not yet set a new execution date for Payne, but there is nothing stopping them from doing so.
“We know that people with intellectual [disabilities] are at a special risk for wrongful conviction and execution,” Payne’s attorney, Nashville-based supervising assistant federal public defender Kelley Henry tells the Scene. “Almost 20 years after the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute the intellectually disabled, Pervis Payne will finally have his day in court. We look forward to the opportunity to present our evidence as we continue to fight for Pervis and his freedom.”
For Frazier Camara, Payne’s case was a catalyst.
“I was in the third grade when I decided I wanted to be a lawyer,” Frazier Camara says. “But I also decided I wanted to fight for people like my community. People who may come from small towns — under-resourced areas — I wanted to be a voice for people that I felt like did not get a fair shake in the system.”
She adds: “I literally remember being a child and going to church and seeing Pervis’ family, how much they prayed. But I was thinking to myself, ‘Something is missing here, right? Like, we need to be praying. But we also need tools.’ ”
Frazier Camara went on to graduate from Tennessee State University before getting her law degree from Howard University and becoming a public defender in Memphis. She spent five years at the Public Defender Service in Washington, D.C., before joining the NLADA.
She is more hopeful about the future than one might expect of a person who has seen the bleak insides of the American criminal justice system. But in cases like Payne’s, Frazier Camara says, advocates can see the problems, and thus the ways to fix the system. The law passed this year by the legislature is one such crucial fix, she says, but there’s more work to be done.
“I really, truly think that this case should shock the consciousness of everybody,” she says. “Because it represents everything that’s wrong with the American legal system.”
