Judge Monte Watkins signed the order to vacate Claude Garrett’s 1992 murder conviction, one month after arson experts said it's unlikely Garrett sparked the fire which killed Lorie Lee Lance.
Executions in the state of Tennessee ground to a halt as the pandemic set in back in March 2020. But, the state plans to resume today by executing Oscar Smith,
More than three decades after she and her boyfriend were wrongly convicted in the death of her four-year-old great-niece, an unusual partnership of prosecutors and defense attorneys brought about what the now-74-year-old Watkins has long prayed for: exoneration.