Murder Case in Doubt, Man Is Freed After 18 Years

A man who spent 18 years in prison for the murder of a Burger King manager was freed Friday, hours after Orange County prosecutors announced that there was strong evidence that he had been home the night of the killing.

Dwayne McKinney, who was 21 when found guilty of the murder and always proclaimed his innocence, smiled softly and clutched a Bible and some letters as he left the state prison in Lancaster.

Eighteen years after he urged jurors to find McKinney guilty, Orange County Dist. Atty. Anthony J. Rackauckas on Friday asked for his immediate release. That decision, which he called a “bitter pill to swallow,” came hours after Rackauckas received the results of a 4 1/2-month investigation by his office. It found strong evidence that McKinney was, as he has contended, the victim of mistaken identity.

Superior Court Judge Kazuharu Makino immediately ordered McKinney freed.

The events that led to the unraveling of the conviction began more than two years ago, when a prison inmate wrote to authorities, telling them that he planned the 1980 robbery in Orange during which the slaying occurred and that another man, also now in prison, pulled the trigger. An inmate who admitted driving the getaway car that night corroborated the first prisoner’s story, officials said.

McKinney, a former gang member from Ontario, has insisted since his first trial in 1982 that authorities had the wrong man, despite testimony from four restaurant workers who identified him as the killer.

“It’s difficult to look back in this case, having the jury decide it, and . . . find that there is another suspect,” Rackauckas said, adding that he is still not sure whether McKinney is innocent or guilty. “When the victims tell you that this person committed the crime, we give a lot of stock to that.”

Jurors deadlocked on whether McKinney should be put to death, leaving him to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.

McKinney, now 39, “is very excited that the nightmare has ended,” said Orange County Public Defender Carl C. Holmes, McKinney’s lawyer during his second trial. “He is very forgiving of people, and he is a very religious man now. He’s taken all this in stride.”

There were questions from the outset about whether McKinney was the killer. Orange police found no physical evidence linking him to the crime. Restaurant workers initially told police that the killer was more than 6 feet tall. McKinney is 5-foot-9. And alibi witnesses testified that McKinney was at home at the time of the murder, walking on crutches as he nursed a gunshot wound to his leg that he had suffered weeks earlier.

Rackauckas told jurors that McKinney’s alibi lacked credibility. Some of McKinney’s witnesses, the prosecutor said, had criminal records and should not be believed.

McKinney’s attorney shot back with a closing argument that still resounds.

Deputy Public Defender Christopher Strople told jurors that as a young, unemployed black man in Los Angeles, McKinney probably would have to rely on testimony from people who had run afoul of the law. Assuming that such witnesses lack credibility, he said, “is one reason why innocent young black kids get convicted.”

Holmes said he believes that race played a role in the convictions. “The fact that he is black made it difficult for the witnesses,” Holmes said. He said two witnesses recently told investigators that they made a mistake in identifying McKinney as the killer.

The case remained closed for 13 years. Then, the public defender’s office received a letter that changed everything.

Serving time in a Lancaster prison for robbery, Charles Hill wrote to Holmes about the night of Dec. 11, 1980. Hill said he had planned the robbery but had backed out at the last minute. Instead, two friends carried it out, he said. Walter Bell, the Burger King’s 19-year-old night manager, was killed.

Bell’s killer entered through a door with a broken lock, drew a .22-caliber pistol and ordered workers to take him to their manager, court documents said.

Bell complied when the robber ordered him to open the safe, but a shot was fired and Bell was struck in the head. The gunman ran to a waiting car with about $2,500, court papers said.

Hill, authorities said, named Raymond Jackett, currently in Ironwood State Prison in Blythe for cocaine possession, as the gunman. The getaway driver, Hill contended, was a cousin, Willie Charles Walker.

Walker, a convicted rapist and robber, admitted in interviews with investigators that he was the driver that night, officials said. The killer, he told them, was Jackett.

“Apparently [Hill’s] conscience overran him after all these years,” Holmes said. “We knew Jackett was a possible suspect, but we couldn’t prove it.”

Public defenders last year filed a motion for a new trial and prosecutors, at first skeptical, launched their own probe of the evidence.