Nashville's Justice A.A. Birch Building
Nashville Criminal Court Judge Angelita Blackshear Dalton concludes the reasoning behind an order handed down Monday with a succinct and devastating statement.
"In short, the evidence in this case tends to exculpate Mr. Garrett as the alleged murderer while inculpating Mr. Atchison who is now indicted for the murder of the listed victim," she writes.
The listed victim is Velma Tharpe, a woman who was a sex worker in North Nashville in 2000 when she was killed. Mr. Garrett is Paul Garrett, the man who was arrested for the killing. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter rather than going to trial on a first-degree murder charge and ended up incarcerated for more than 10 years. Mr. Atchison is Calvin Atchison, the man who was arrested and charged with Tharpe's murder in May after Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk disavowed the conviction that had come under his predecessor, Torry Johnson.
On Monday, Dalton vacated Garrett's conviction, granting a motion from the Tennessee Innocence Project. In all, Garrett has spent almost 20 years either imprisoned for or shadowed by a killing that he has now been cleared of. The decision comes after a lengthy court hearing reopening the case last month.
"It is our honor to represent Paul Shane Garrett," reads a joint statement from TEP attorney Jessica Van Dyke and Knoxville attorney Stephen Ross Johnson. "We were pleased to receive the court's order vacating his conviction and shining a light on the true facts of his case. For Mr. Garrett and his family, this has been a long wait for justice. The Tennessee Innocence Project represents people across our state asserting actual innocence. Mr. Garrett is not the first person whose wrongful conviction has been exposed, and he won't be the last."
The serious flaws in Garrett's prosecution and conviction were made public by way of a report from the Conviction Review Unit in the DA's office, led by former defense attorney Sunny Eaton. But the report details how problems with the case should have been known and later were known internally. Among them: false testimony by a police detective at Garrett's preliminary hearing; the decision to proceed with the prosecution even after testing showed that DNA found on Tharpe's body was not Garrett's; negligence by Johnson's office, which allowed subsequent DNA test results pointing to Atchison as a better suspect in the killing to go unaddressed; and Johnson's decision to defend the conviction in court in 2012 after an internal report from one of his own top prosecutors said the conviction should not be allowed to stand.
"The mission statement of the Nashville District Attorney’s Office is to 'Do Justice, Always,' says Sunny Eaton in a statement released by the DA's office. "In November 2020, MNPD Detective Mike Roland alerted the Conviction Review Unit of Mr. Garrett’s innocence. Extensive review by the Conviction Review Unit revealed that for years, there has been clear and convincing evidence Mr. Garrett did not commit this crime. The District Attorney’s Office will continue to re-examine convictions if there is new evidence indicating actual innocence."
This day might never have come for Garrett if not for the way his case stuck in the mind of cold case Det. Mike Roland. He came to prosecutors late last year to alert them about what he believed was a wrongful conviction.
A decade ago, with Garrett nearing his release from prison for a murder he always maintained he did not commit, Roland and then-Sgt. Pat Postiglione went to interview him as they re-investigated the case. The internal DA's office report on the case that followed notes what Garrett said to the officers, something he might be thinking again today.
"Guys, what took you so long?"
