On January 3, 2024, the CIR joined with Williams’s lawyers in requesting that the petition be granted. Judge Lindsay Tygart vacated Williams’s convictions, and the prosecution dismissed the charges.

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The Crime
 

At about 4 p.m. on October 8, 1975, 35-year-old Kathrina Farah was behind the counter of her store, Wesconnett Produce, at 5422 Wesconnett Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida, when a Black man entered. He drew a gun and demanded she empty the cash register into a paper bag he was holding.

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The Investigation
 

On October 10, 1975, Williams was charged with two counts of attempted murder and two counts of armed robbery.

That same day, Ross was shown the red, white, and blue striped shirt. He said Williams was wearing it that day. West was shown a photographic lineup and again was unable to make any identification. West was shown the red, white, and blue striped shirt and said the man who went into the produce store was wearing it.

Farah was left with only peripheral vision as a result of the shooting. She viewed a photographic lineup and later a live lineup but was unable to make any identification.

Police eventually recovered bullets that were removed from Phillips and Farah and sent them for firearms analysis. A bullet was also removed from the wall in the produce store.

On October 27, 1975, Phillips was shown a photographic lineup and identified Williams as the man who shot him in the produce store. On October 29, Phillips viewed a live lineup and identified Williams as the gunman.

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The Trial
 

In February 1976, Williams went to trial in Duval County Circuit Court.

Phillips identified Williams as the man who shot him in the produce store. Farah testified and was not asked to make an in-court identification. Asked during cross-examination if she could make an identification, Farah said, “I’m not sure. I can’t say.”

West identified Mitchell as the driver of the Buick who went into the produce store. West testified that Williams was not the driver of the Buick.

Donald Champagne, a firearms examiner for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), testified through a stipulation that the blue steel revolver fired the bullet that was removed from Mitchell’s head, and the chrome revolver fired one of the bullets removed from Phillips’s head. The analyst also said he had compared a bullet removed from the victim of a fatal shooting a week earlier during a robbery of a furniture store to the chrome handgun. The result of that comparison was not disclosed.

Richard Stephens, an FDLE forensic serologist, testified that Farah and Phillips had type O blood. He said Williams had type AB blood and Mitchell had type A blood. He said the upholstery from the Buick had a “very small” bloodstain that contained both type A and type B factors present. He said the stain could have been AB blood mixed with A blood or A blood mixed with B blood. He said there was no way he could distinguish between those possibilities or how old the stain was.

A test on what was believed to be blood found on Williams’s back was negative. In addition, the gunshot residue test was said to be inconclusive. A fingerprint examiner testified that he was not able to develop any fingerprints suitable for comparison.

Williams testified and denied going into the produce store. He denied shooting Phillips or Farah. He said he had no prior knowledge that Mitchell was about to commit a robbery. He said he was wearing blue, white, and reddish-pink pants and a blue shirt with pink, blue, and green flowers on the front, blue shoes, and a blue visor.

Williams said he began the day at 6 a.m. by picking up a friend, Albert Jones, and driving to the longshoreman hall to look for work. There was none, so they went to Jones’s house. He spent some time there, drove home to see his wife, but when she was not home, he returned to Jones’s home. Williams said he drove home again around 2 or 2:30 p.m., but his wife was still not home. He said he was headed back to Jones’s house when he saw Ross.

Williams said Ross asked for a ride downtown. When Williams said he did not have much gas, Ross offered to buy it. They had stopped at a station to do so when Mitchell approached, Williams said. After paying for $2 worth of gas, Williams drove Ross and Mitchell toward downtown. After dropping off Ross, Mitchell said he wanted to pick up a check.

Williams said he did not have a valid driver’s license, so he didn’t want to drive far. Mitchell offered to drive, and showed him a valid license. Williams got into the passenger seat and Mitchell drove off. He stopped the car around the corner from Cocky’s Grocery Store. Williams said Mitchell grabbed a red, white and blue shirt from the back of the car and went inside Cocky’s. Williams said after a few minutes, he went inside the grocery store to use the bathroom. Williams said Mitchell was standing at the counter with the shirt on the counter. Williams said he went back to the car and waited for Mitchell, who, when he came out, was wearing the red, white and blue striped shirt.

Williams said Mitchell drove to the produce store. Along the way, Williams said he yelled a greeting at a friend he knew as “Gooch,” who waved in return. They stopped to get $2 more of gas and then stopped at the produce store.

Williams said Mitchell, still wearing that red, white, and blue striped shirt, got out. He said he didn’t see which building Mitchell entered because bushes obstructed his view. Williams said as he was waiting, he got hot, so he took off his shirt. He said he moved behind the wheel and drove the car forward about six or seven feet.

When Mitchell returned, Williams moved back to the passenger seat. Williams said Mitchell threw a wallet to the floor and sped off. Williams said Mitchell hit a car and kept going. Williams said he told Mitchell stop, but he refused. Williams said Mitchell pulled out a dark pistol and said, “I just killed two people. Don’t you be the third one.”

When a police car pulled them over and an officer, using a loudspeaker, ordered them to get out, Mitchell told Williams not to get out and then sped off. By that time, Williams said Mitchell had taken off the red, white, and blue striped shirt.

Williams said that when the car stopped at one point, he was able to flee. He told the jury that Mitchell shot at him, but missed.

Lynwood Harley, who worked at Cocky’s Grocery store, testified that between 3 and 4 p.m. on the day of the shooting, Mitchell, who was Harley’s cousin, came into the store wearing a white t-shirt and carrying a striped shirt. At the counter, Mitchell pulled out two guns. He pointed one at Harley and one at Curtis Frederick, a store employee who also was related to Mitchell. Harley said one gun was black and the other gun was silver.

Harley said that when Williams entered the store to use the bathroom, Mitchell wrapped the guns inside the striped shirt. Harley identified the red, white, and blue striped shirt that was in evidence as the one Mitchell had at the store.

Frederick testified that Mitchell had come into the store, asked for money, and then pulled out two pistols from a striped shirt.

Harley and Mitchell both testified that Mitchell left without any money.

The defense sought to introduce evidence that the bullet in the furniture store robbery was fired by the chrome gun used to shoot Phillips. The defense also wanted to present testimony from Mitchell’s sister-in-law, who had said that Mitchell had a $200-a-day drug habit. She said that the night before the produce store shooting, Mitchell told her he had killed a man in a furniture company store. She said he told her that “before he go back to jail, he will kill himself.” The defense also wanted to present evidence that the police had concluded that Mitchell was solely responsible for the furniture store robbery-murder. The judge, however, refused to allow the evidence to be presented to the jury.

During closing argument, the prosecutor focused heavily on the identification of Williams by Phillips, who he said was “believable, is a humble, hard-working man,” and who would never forget the face of the man who robbed and shot him.

Post-Conviction
 

On June 30, 2020, Williams was released on parole, 44 years, four months, and 15 days after he was convicted.

In 2021, the Conviction Integrity Review (CIR) unit of the Fourth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s office agreed to review Williams’s case. Touch DNA testing was conducted on Phillips’s wallet and the red, white, and blue shirt, but no DNA was found. However, in reviewing the evidence in the case, the CIR, headed by prosecutor Shelly Thibodeau, discovered that Phillips had been hypnotized prior to his identification of Williams. Hypnosis has long been considered junk science because of the potential to create false memories. A detective recalled during an interview with the CIR that he suggested that a Jacksonville Sheriff’s office lieutenant who had studied hypnotism use hypnosis on Phillips. The detective said Phillips was hypnotized in the police station before Phillips selected Williams out of the photographic lineup.

The CIR interviewed Phillips, who confirmed he had been hypnotized. He said his memory had “blacked out” after being shot, and he could not remember anything about any of it prior to being hypnotized.

On October 19, 2023, Williams, represented by attorneys Brandon Scheck and Seth Miller of the Innocence Project of Florida, filed a petition seeking to vacate Williams’s convictions. The petition said the failure to disclose that Phillips had been hypnotized had critically handicapped the defense’s ability to undercut the sole identification of Williams as the gunman. The jury, the petition said, “was led to falsely believe that Phillips had [a] consistent, unforgettable recall of Williams as the shooter.”

 

“Despite the overwhelming evidence that Mitchell—not Williams—was the shooter, law enforcement forged forward with their commitment to the theory that Williams was the shooter, likely because Mitchell committed suicide and, therefore, could not be prosecuted,” the petition said.

On January 3, 2024, the CIR joined with Williams’s lawyers in requesting that the petition be granted. Judge Lindsay Tygart vacated Williams’s convictions, and the prosecution dismissed the charges. Following the hearing, Scheck said, “The story to be told here is the work that the prosecutors did in the 4th Circuit, and their pursuit of justice and figuring out getting to the bottom of the truth,” Scheck said. “It speaks to the significance of the work that the prosecutors here in Jacksonville are doing on a day-to-day basis.” The Fourth Circuit State Attorney’s issued a statement saying: “Years after Williams’[s] convictions, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that hypnotically refreshed memory was unreliable and consequently inadmissible as evidence of guilt. As a result, the state will not refile the charges from 1975 against Williams.”

At the time, no other exonerated person in Florida history had served as long as Williams. In an interview with WJCT News 89.9 after the case was dismissed, Williams recalled that after he was sentenced, he believed he would die in prison, but he didn’t realize that “God had a better plan. And this is that plan: I’m going to be out here free, with my family and my friends.”

In April 2024, Williams filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Jacksonville against the city of Jacksonville, Duval County and detectives from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.