Jeffrey Randle
I’m Jeffrey Randle and my conviction is a prime example of the quality of Justice in the State of Mississippi.
I was arrested on January 4, 1997 for the murder of Mrs. Willie Mae Sewell, my next door neighbor. She had asked me to come by her house early to rake her yard. When I got to her door, I knocked on it and waited. No one answered but I heard a noise in the house. The door was open so I went in calling her name. I found her laid out on the floor, so I grabbed her arm to test to see if she had a pulse.
When I bent down, someone hit me on the side of my head. It rattled me, but I’m a strong man and I fought. I realized there were two men in the room. I got my shirt torn up, but I managed to escape. I couldn’t identify either one of them because they were wearing camouflage and masks.
I immediately ran to another neighbor’s house and had her phone the police. She saw my torn shirt and the knot on my head. Officer Bobby Lane of the West Point ( Clay Co.) MS. Police department came to investigate. He followed me to the house of Mrs. Sewell and he found her dead and the room torn up.
They took me to the police station and locked me up. They told me they needed information about the murder. I was trying to cooperate, when some time went by Detective Johnson came to tell me I was the primary suspect in the murder. I asked for an attorney. I was in Special Ed. in school and dropped out in the seventh grade.( A friend wrote my story down because I don’t read or write well at all.) I didn’t get an attorney. What I got was two days of grilling at the hands of a college Educated Police Officer.
While he was questioning me in one session, he told me that they knew I was in the house. They could prove that Mrs. Sowell had been robbed and I would die of lethal injection----The Death Penalty, if I didn’t confess. During one session, he left the room and came back and told me that he had talked to the D.A. and the Judge and they assured me if I didn’t confess, I would die. I didn’t know what to do, so I broke down and said I did it because I didn’t want to die that way. I didn’t know what else to do!
When I first got an attorney, he saw that the confession was coerced and illegal. He moved to suppress it, but the Judge allowed. My attorney continued to show the gaps and inconsistencies in their evidence. He asked for them to do forensic analysis of the crime scene and DNA samples to prove that my story would hold up, as they found out there was hair from two sources in the house --some Caucasian. The Murder weapon was a rope, but Officer Charlie Johnson had me say a telephone cord on the taped confession.
The trial finally came two-and-a-half years later.
My attorney’s efforts at a directed verdict of “not guilty” by lack of evidence was refused. The court also denied my request for DNA analysis because they said “ I had confessed”. I had scratches on my leg, they said from where she scratched me. DNA samples from under her fingernails were not taken. It would prove my innocence if I could prove that those scratches came from broken glass while I was attacked by two men who killed her. She was dead when I went into the house, she could not have scratched me.
At the trial, we lost. I was given a guilty verdict and sentenced to life without parole. A little bit of police work ( that would have been the normal course of action in most states in our Union) would have proved that I didn’t murder Willie Mae Sewell. I was railroaded into a confession.
I am currently fighting for a new trial in the Federal Court. I pray that God will take a hand to help me prove I am not a murderer. I have not been a good man most of my life, but now I am a new man in Christ. I am housed at MCCF in Holly Springs. I am in the BEST program. It is Bible Education/Substance Training. I’m in their Adult Literacy Class and I am working on a degree in Bible Theology.
God has blessed me while in prison. I feel His presence in my legal battles. He is teaching me to wait on His presence in my life. I know he will show up some day and I will prove I did not murder Mrs. Sewell. All the evidence I need is in the evidence room in Clay Co. MS. and a crime lab that will prove I was telling the truth when I asked Mrs. Doss to call the police, Mrs. Sewell has been killed.
Jeffrey Randle
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The Jeffrey Randle Story
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This page was last updated: March 3, 2009
Jeffery Randle -- Rail-roaded into a life sentence by police too lazy or too unconcerned to do their jobs.
Can we get his story to enough people to force DNA testing of the evidence he says will clear him?
Jeffrey Randle # 81125
Unit 5 EMCF
10641 Hwy 80 East
Meridian MS 39304
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