Willie T. Donald has been imprisoned since 1992 for a robbery and murder in Gary, Indiana, that he always insisted he didn’t commit. Now he might be just a day or two from going free.
The key development in Donald’s potential release, Vanes says, was finally locating Rhonda Williams.
Vanes says Lake County Superior Court based its reversal on the failure of the state to share exculpatory evidence with the defense, but he thinks the court also had serious doubts about Donald’s guilt. “In the end,” he reflected in an e-mail to me, “not many years behind bars got saved but a name got cleared, to the extent such is possible in the criminal justice system.” Donald would have been eligible for release regardless in 2021.
