Andrew Wilson spent more than three decades behind bars before a judge threw out his conviction last year. Now, the 63-year-old is filing a lawsuit against a detective who he believes led a witness to identify him as a killer.
Wilson was convicted of murder in the 1980s and believes witness leading by Los Angeles Police Department Detective Richard Marks is to blame. Marks, who is now retired, later described Wilson as a “thug” because he had had run-ins with the law pertaining to drugs.
“You took 32 years of my life,” Wilson, who has always denied the charges against him, said recently.
On Oct. 23, 1984, 21-year-old Christopher Hanson was stabbed to death during a robbery. His girlfriend, Saladena Bishop, was with him at the time; the pair was sleeping in Hanson’s truck. Bishop, 17, was not hurt.
According to The National Reigstery of Exonerations:
The following day, Bishop looked through more than 1,500 police mug shot photos and selected a photograph of Johnny McKinney as the man at the passenger side of the truck. However, that was wrong — McKinney was in jail at the time of the crime. Among the photographs she viewed, but did not select, was that of 29-year-old Andrew Wilson.
On October 25, 1984, Bishop returned to the police station and went through the same photo books again. This time, she identified the photograph of Marshaunt Jackson as a man who had an altercation with Hanson four days before the murder. Again, she passed over the photograph of Andrew Wilson.
One month and two false IDs later, Bishop leafed through mugshots again. Detective Marks showed her 16 photos.
He pointed to one in particular, and said, “What about him”
Bishop was now almost positive this was the man who killed her boyfriend.
The man Andrew Wilson.
The method Marks employed in this case — and others — is largely viewed as controversial; some police departments have eliminated it entirely. Some are instead adopting a double-blind method, in which neither the officer conducting the lineup is not aware of what picture the witness is looking at while he or she makes an ID.
According to the Innocence Project, of the wrongful convictions that have been overturned thanks to DNA in the United States, about 71 percent were the result of a mistaken eyewitness identification.
“In a standard lineup, the lineup administrator typically knows who the suspect is. Research shows that administrators often provide unintentional cues to the eyewitness about which person to pick from the lineup,” the Innocence Project states.
Or, in Marks’ case, some people may provide intentional cues.
Marks has been accused of similar conduct before, Wilson learned in 2014, while still in jail, when an attorney contacted him.
“The attorney wrote that he represented another man serving life for murder, and that an eyewitness had recently recanted, saying Marks and his partner had coerced a false identification. Marks denied any wrongdoing in that case,” the LA Times reported.
Marks told The Times he “has a clear conscience.” He was also not too invested in whether or not Bishop’s ID may have been shaky.
In an interview two years ago, attorneys from Loyola Law School, who took on Wilson’s case, asked Marks if Bishop may have recognized Wilson because she used to baby-sit his children. Marks said this was, of course, possible.
“Were you concerned about that” asked a prosecutor.
“I wouldn’t say that I was concerned,” Marks replied.
Wilson is concerned every day, though. He lives in constant fear of law enforcement.
“He doesn’t run errands when it’s dark outside, and the sight of a patrol car sparks a panic attack — his heart races and his breathing gets short,” according to the Times.
Wilson works mopping floors in a lab but recently had to miss work due to a back injury. But Marks is still often on Wilson’s mind, he told the Times.
