Alleged ‘New’ Murder Evidence Is From Different Case
July 30, 2020 – “Newly discovered” blood-stained bedding that defense attorneys claim could prove the innocence of death-row inmate Pervis Payne with DNA testing is actually from a separate murder case that occurred nine years after his 1988 conviction for the brutal stabbings of a Millington mother and her two young children, said Shelby County Dist. Atty. Gen. Amy Weirich.
Payne’s defense lawyers, including a team from the Innocence Project, said they discovered the bedding last December in the property room while looking through evidence, and accused prosecutors of illegally concealing it from them for the past 32 years.
“That is completely and entirely false,” DA Weirich and Asst. Dist. Atty. Steve Jones said in a 19-page brief filed Wednesday. “There is no new evidence in this case. (Payne’s) multiple defense attorneys have reviewed all of the evidence in this case multiple times before, during and after his jury trial.”
Payne, 53, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 3 for the murders of Charisse Christopher, 28, and her 2-year-old daughter, Lacie, on June 27, 1987, in their Millington apartment. Her son, Nicholas, 3, was critically injured, but survived his multiple stab wounds.
While reviewing evidence in the case last December, federal public defender Kelley Henry said she discovered a bag containing bloody bedding items from the case that the defense had never seen before.
In the state’s petition, Jones said a property room attendant gave the defense the two marked boxes of evidence from the Payne case. The attendant also produced a bag containing bloody bedding items that belonged to an entirely different case.
“The bag had markings on the outside of the bag and had markings on each item of bedding therein, but the markings did not identify it in any way as relating to the State v. Payne case,” Jones said in the petition. “Based on the markings on the items of property in the bag containing bed linens, more specifically the initials of…the crime scene officer who collected the property, it is impossible that the property in the bag has any association with the 1987 Millington crime scene in State v. Payne.”
The petition includes photographs of the bedding that were taken at the crime scene of a separate murder in 1998 in which defendant Geraldrick Jones was convicted. A crime scene officer also has identified the evidence as well as his initials he placed on the property – a pillow, comforter and two sheets - when he collected it at the scene on May 29, 1998, on Meda Street in Orange Mound.
Payne’s defense team sought DNA testing of crime scene evidence in 2006.The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals presumed that the requested DNA testing would produce a result favorable to the defense and denied on several grounds, including that even favorable results for the defense would not establish a reasonable probability of a different outcome at trial.
The Tennessee Supreme Court took note of the incriminating evidence, including that Payne’s baseball cap was found on Lacie Christopher’s forearm which was sticking through the opening between the adjustment strap and cap material; Payne said he approached the apartment when he heard the baby crying, yet the medical examiner said her knife wounds “would have been rapidly fatal;” the brief passage of time from when residents heard a disturbance to the time of arrival by police “virtually forecloses” the possibility of an unknown intruder committing the murders and disappearing before Payne entered the apartment; and Payne’s own testimony was “damning.”
When trying to explain why he had so much blood on him, Payne said it was when he pulled the knife out of Ms. Christopher’s neck. He said she reached for him and fell against the kitchen wall, splattering him with blood. She had been stabbed 41 times.
The state Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence finding the “jury was justified in rejecting as unbelievable and contrary to human conduct and experience his alleged efforts to render aid to the Christophers.”
Earlier this year the court set an execution date for Dec. 3.
“DNA testing would not exonerate the defendant, yet the defense has waited 14 years to pursue a second request for testing,” said DA Weirich, “Delaying the filing of a second petition for this long shows the true defense motive is to delay the execution.”