BLOUNT COUNTY, Tenn — The first Black woman to be exonerated of a crime in the state is speaking in East Tennessee this week.
Joyce Watkins is the featured speaker at back-to-back events hosted by the Tennessee Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that focuses on exonerating people who've been convicted of a crime they never committed.
The first event is planned for July 23 at the Landing House in Knoxville, at 5:30 p.m. EDT. The second event is planned for July 24 at Leconte Realty in Maryville, at 6:00 p.m.
Watkins, and her then-boyfriend Charlie Dunn, were convicted of raping and murdering her four-year-old great-niece, Brandi, in the late 1980s. Brandi was killed in Davidson County, and Nashville courts took up the case.
Both Dunn and Watkins maintained their innocence for years, and that's where the Tennessee Innocence Project comes in.
Chief Legal Counsel Jason Gichner said the moment he heard from Watkins, he knew she didn't commit the crime she was convicted of.
Gichner said It's important for the workers with the Tennessee Innocence Project to believe the person they're helping is innocent, adding they investigate everyone's case before taking it on.
"We need to follow the evidence and we need to put our personal feelings aside that all went out the window with Joyce Watkins," he said. "Because if you spend about two minutes with her, you know, that Joyce Watkins, it is not possible that she did what she was convicted of doing. It's just, I have never met anybody who has met Joyce who has spent any time with her at all who thinks it is remotely possible she committed those crimes. It's just, it is not possible."
That's what a report for Davidson County's Conviction Review Unit decided as well, and the courts exonerated both Watkins and Dunn in 2022.
Exoneration differs from parole because it clears the person of any penalties connected to a felony conviction.
"When we're talking about an exoneration, we're talking about proving that somebody is innocent, and they didn't actually do the thing they were sent to prison for," Gichner said.
The Tennessee Innocence Project started litigating cases in 2019, but most of the work has been done in rural areas, or in Nashville or Memphis.
"Since then, we've been representing folks all over the state of Tennessee," Gichner said. "And in the last three-and-a-half years, we've exonerated six people who were convicted of crimes that they didn't commit, who collectively served 147 years in prison for things that they didn't do."
Gischner said the goal is to help people in this part of the state.
"East Tennessee is, frankly, a place where the Tennessee Innocence Project wants to work more cases," said Tennessee Innocence Project Chief Legal Counsel Jason Gichner. "We've done more work in Nashville and Memphis and some of the rural counties around there. And there are innocent people in East Tennessee serving time for crimes that they didn't commit."
Knoxville Hip-Hop Artist Lane Schuler is one of the contacts for the East Tennessee faction of the nonprofit.
"I'm proud to help the Tennessee Innocence Project work to right our wrongs in our wonderful state by freeing our innocent," Shuler said.