At 11:18 a.m. on October 31, 1993, sheriff’s deputies received a 911 call about an armed robbery at a house on the outskirts of Cleveland, Tennessee. Deputy Sheriff Roxanne Blackwell with the Bradley County Sheriff’s Office found 49-year-old Leslie Watson in the middle of the living room, covered in a blanket. She was naked and had a bullet wound in her left leg, above the knee.
At the hospital, Watson told deputies that she had skipped going to church that morning because she wasn’t feeling well. After she took a shower, she put on a bathrobe and heard a noise in the house. She thought it was her daughter, Ellen Summers, who had called earlier that morning to check up on her. But Watson said she turned around and saw a young white man—she called him a “boy”—holding a knife. He told her not to panic. They just wanted her money. She said she then heard another man, whom she could not see, say, “Oh, shit, she’s here.”
Then, Watson said, a young white woman came into the room, holding a butcher knife from the kitchen. She said the man and the woman took Watson to her bedroom and dumped out her purse and took around $200 and some jewelry. They insisted she had more money. Watson said they pulled off her robe and took her to the living room. The woman continued searching the house, Watson said, and found a .22-caliber pistol.
Later, Watson would testify, the woman told the young man to sexually assault her. She said he anally raped her, then made her perform oral sex on him. She said the woman removed her pants and forced Watson to perform oral sex on her. The man and the woman sexually assaulted Watson with the gun and a can of aerosol, Watson said, and they also dumped lotion on her. At some point during the assault, Watson said, the other man, whom she could still not see, yelled that he had “found what I was looking for.”
During the attack, Watson said, the young man had placed the gun near her leg and said he could blow off her kneecap. She said the gun went off, and a bullet hit her in the upper thigh. She said the intruders ran and dropped the gun, discarding it near Watson, who picked up the weapon and fired a shot. She said she got up, called a neighbor, who came over to the house and called 911.
In an interview at the hospital at 12:15 p.m., Watson told Detective Robert Hyden that the young man with a knife was “under 6:00 ft [sic] tall, about 20 y.o.a. at the most. He had brownish hair, long in back, short on top. He had on khaki colored/camouflage pants and shirt. He was a white male.” She said the woman, whom she called a girl, was “dirty. She was 16-17 y.o.a. She was a white female 5:06- 5:07 [sic] appeared 100 lbs with dirty blond hair. She was dressed in grey shorts with dingy white sweatshirt.” Watson said she could not describe the other man. She said she only heard his voice and saw his legs, and that he wore jeans and appeared to be heavyset. Nothing in Hyden’s notes suggested that Watson knew any of the assailants.
At 1:15 p.m., police in neighboring Rhea County arrived at the home of 20-year-old Samuel Scott Minton to question his friend, 17-year-old Shannon Blaylock, about the reported sexual assault. Watson had been a foster parent to Blaylock from 1987-1989. Minton lived in Dayton, and the two young men were working on Minton’s Camaro, which was on blocks. Several other young people, including 21-year-old Angela Manning, Blaylock’s girlfriend, were also present. Investigators asked Minton and Blaylock to go to the Rhea County Sheriff’s Department for questioning.
During his interview with Hyden, Minton described his activities that morning, which involved a series of trips in and around Dayton to get parts and gas. Minton said he drove his sister’s car, a distinctive jalopy with extensive damage to the front end. In a separate interview, Blaylock gave a statement that tracked Minton’s account. Minton had two receipts from the Advance Auto Parts Store, with recorded times of 10:06 a.m. and 10:15 a.m., When Detectives took Minton to the store, John Heath, a clerk, confirmed Minton had been there that morning.
Watson had told detectives that the assault began between 10:30 and 11 a.m. Watson’s home in Bradley County was an hour away from Dayton, and the trip was difficult to make, requiring a ferry trip across the Tennessee River.
Watson looked at several photo arrays on October 31, one of which included Minton. She did not make a selection. She looked at arrays including female suspects and selected Manning.
At around 11 p.m. on October 31, Minton was taken to the Bradley County Sheriff’s Office and held until 5 a.m. Officers told Minton that he could go home if he consented to a search of his trailer. Minton could not read, but signed the waiver. The search did not turn up any evidence. On the ride home, Minton would later testify, the officers told him numerous details of the reported crime.
On November 1, Watson told Detective Anthony Benefield that Blaylock had called her on October 30 and said he was thinking about coming to pay her a visit. She said he wanted to know if she was going to be at church that Sunday.
Henry and Ella Farr, Watson’s parents, owned the house. Watson and her husband had moved in a few months earlier. At some point in the investigation, Henry Farr reported that $7,600 in cash, which he had planned to use to prepay his funeral expenses, had been stolen from its hiding place in a closet.
On November 2, Minton was asked to return to the Rhea County Sheriff’s Office. Minton remained there for six hours before detectives from Bradley County took him back across the river to their facility for more questioning.
During the interview, the detectives continued to reveal details of the crime, based on Watson’s account. They asked Minton about putting cigarettes on her chest and told him about the money stolen from the house. They told Minton he was holding back and that he would feel better if he made a full confession. Eventually, Minton broke down and placed himself at the scene. He told investigators that Blaylock had tied up Watson but then revised his account after detectives informed him that this was at odds with other evidence.
Watson viewed a live lineup that day and selected Minton as one of the assailants. Also on November 2, Manning gave a statement inculpating herself, Minton, and Blaylock with the attack. All three were arrested. Minton was charged with five counts of aggravated rape, one count of aggravated kidnapping, one count of aggravated robbery, one count of theft over $1,000, one count of aggravated burglary, and one count of conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary. Manning and Blaylock faced similar charges. The three defendants were tried separately.
Prior to trial, Minton moved to suppress his statement to sheriff’s deputies and Watson’s identification. He said officers had coerced his statement and not allowed him to speak with an attorney. Minton also said Watson’s identification was tainted. The initial photo array was non-standard; most of the fillers bore little resemblance to Minton. That made Watson’s failure to select Minton more significant.
Minton’s attorney, Arnold Fitzgerald, said, “We were objecting to any line-up as to where people who are not characteristic of this particular man would be, and they have got people in there that’s real fat and somebody that is kind of skinny out there, and I don’t think it makes up a good composite.”
Judge Steven Bebb of Bradley County Criminal Court said: “Well, the Court is going to rule against you on that matter. It’s as much of a composite of a white human race as I’ve seen. I mean there’s—take any description you want to take and they are in there if they are white.”
Fitzgerald said, “Your Honor, a lot of them are at a tremendous variance with the defendant is the reason I say that about the composite.”
Judge Bebb said, “Well they are not all supposed to look just alike, or that’s the way I understand the law.”
Minton’s trial began later in March 1994. There was no physical or forensic evidence connecting Minton to the incident. Watson testified about the reported attack in graphic detail, describing how Minton and Manning terrorized and sexually assaulted her while Blaylock ransacked the house.
Her account had changed over time. She had not told healthcare workers at the hospital that she was anally raped by Minton but first mentioned its possibility to Hyden later on October 31. Watson testified the omission was based on her embarrassment. In addition, it was only at Minton’s preliminary hearing, in November 1993, when she first said that Manning had sexually assaulted her. In addition, Watson was unable to explain how Blaylock knew Watson was living with her parents. Investigators did not find any evidence of a call made by Blaylock to Watson.
Minton testified and denied any involvement in the attack. He said he had never even been to Bradley County before the sheriff’s deputies took him there and that he was coerced into confessing after being denied his request for an attorney and being held in isolation in a cell with no running water, no TV or radio, and no working toilet. He said that he could not read and did not understand the waiver of his rights that he signed. Mary Hickman, Minton’s mother, testified about her son’s learning deficits.
Minton gave a detailed account of the morning of October 31, as he and Blaylock drove around Dayton in search of repair parts for his Camaro. The two auto parts stores they visited didn’t open until 10, and the car they were using had engine trouble, which required several side trips for jumper cables and other efforts to get it running again. Eventually, they returned to Advanced Auto a little after 10, and Minton bought a transmission seal and a screwdriver, receiving separate receipts.
In his testimony, Minton described a harrowing trip in custody from Rhea County to Bradley County. He said he was handcuffed in the back of a car traveling 95 miles per hour through the countryside. The officers were cursing at him and demanding he confess. After they arrived at the sheriff’s department, Minton told the detectives that he could not confess to something he did not do. The officers put him in the “drunk tank” for about an hour, then transferred him to another cell. Eventually, he said, the officers told him to “just say that you was [sic] there and just put everything, all we have done told you and what you have heard and everything in details and just put that you and Angie and Shannon … in the picture and we will get you out of the cell.”
Minton said the officers started recording the interview, then stopped and started over when he asked for an attorney.
Minton said the statement he gave just repeated the information the officers told him. “I mean just about every one of them told us, you know, that she got raped, that she got tied up with brown panty hose, they told us that she got tied up with brown panty hose, that they, you know, they … done it every which way,” he said. “They stole her money and went in her back door and they just told it right down to the detail.”
Seventeen witnesses, including clerks at Advanced Auto and Minton’s friends and family, testified that Minton had been in Dayton all morning. The clerks testified that the receipts accurately reflected the time of the purchases.
Daylight Savings Time had begun on October 31, which required setting clocks back one hour. The clerks testified that cash registers at the store automatically reset at 2 a.m. But an equipment technician at Advanced Auto Parts testified that the clocks in the company’s computer system had to be manually reset.
According to the state’s theory, that meant Minton and Blaylock had actually been at the store just after 9 a.m., giving them and Manning plenty of time to get to Cleveland County.
Detective Anthony Benefield testified that Minton never actually asked for an attorney but instead made a passing reference of a need for an attorney.
During cross-examination, Fitzgerald asked Benefield why he didn’t let Minton call an attorney.
Benefield said: “Because I was very clear, and I was very determined, and I asked him, because he made it kind of like a passing statement, ‘I don’t even know the number of one if I wanted to,’ or something like that. I said, ‘Now wait a minute, are you saying if you knew a number, are you saying you want an attorney if you knew one to call.’ I said, ‘We can get you an attorney if you want to talk to one.’ He said, ‘No, no, no. I want to talk. I want to talk now.’ He said, ‘I’m not saying I want an attorney.’”
Manning did not testify, and her statement was not introduced at Minton’s trial.
The jury convicted Minton of the charges on March 31, 1994, and he was later sentenced to 76 years in prison.
Blaylock was convicted on May 25, 1994, on conspiracy to commit burglary, aggravated burglary, theft, and aggravated robbery. He received a sentence of 23 years in prison.
By the time of Manning’s trial, in July 1994, questions about Watson’s truthfulness had started to surface. Manning’s attorney sought to introduce a wide range of impeachment evidence against Watson. At the time she reported the assault, Watson had an outstanding arrest warrant in Bradley County for writing bad checks that had been issued on October 22, 1993.
At a pre-trial hearing, two loss-control managers at area K-Marts testified about their efforts to recover money from Watson. In addition, one of Watson’s daughters testified that she once saw her checkbook in her mother’s pocketbook and later received about 30 letters from collection agencies about bad checks written on the account.
Stoney Jack Anderson, who was married to Watson from 1963 to 1970 and from 1971 to 1976, testified at the pre-trial hearing that his wife staged a burglary at their home in 1975. He also testified that his wife staged a purported kidnapping scheme involving their daughter around 1973. Anderson also said that Watson had written bad checks during their marriage and twice intentionally burned herself with cigarettes during fights preceding their divorces.
Judge Bebb excluded most of this evidence, except for the current charges against Watson. At the trial, Watson testified that at the time she wrote the bad checks, she was suffering from a “calcium storm” and did not know what she was doing. Manning was convicted on July 14, 1994, of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape, aggravated burglary, theft, and conspiracy. She received a sentence of 25 years in prison.
All three defendants appealed.
In Minton’s appeal, he argued that Judge Bebb erred in denying his motions to suppress, and that the state had failed to disclose Watson’s arrest warrant. In its opinion affirming the conviction, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals said Judge Bebb had not erred in the suppression rulings. The decision, released on August 27, 1996, also said that the impeachment evidence regarding Watson’s outstanding arrest warrant would not have made a difference at trial. The court dismissed Minton’s conviction for aggravated kidnapping, writing that his actions didn’t meet the statutory definition of the crime.
In 2019, attorneys for the Tennessee Innocence Project and the Innocence Project began representing Minton. On March 2, 2023, the attorneys filed a motion for post-conviction relief (PCR) and a separate petition for a writ of error coram nobis.
The PCR motion said that Minton was innocent. In 2021, several pieces of crime-scene evidence—the pantyhose used to bind Watson, an aerosol spray can, and a bottle of lotion—were tested for the presence of DNA. Minton was excluded as a contributor to genetic material on the can and the bottle and on part of the sock. For another part of the sock, the genetic material was so limited that Minton could not be excluded.
The motion also included reports from Dr. Nancy Franklin, an expert on eyewitness misidentification, and Dr. Brian Cutler, an expert on interrogations and false confessions.
In Franklin’s report, she said that stress and fear would have impacted Watson’s ability to accurately describe her assailants. She noted that Watson’s initial identifications of the persons she would later identify as Manning and Minton were at odds with their actual descriptions. She said the male assailant had a mullet and was over six feet tall. Neither description fit Minton. Watson said the female assailant had a cleft palate. Manning didn’t.
Franklin also said that Watson’s account changed over time. It was only after the arrests that she told investigators that the assailants referred to each other by name. “The absence of any names in [Watson’s] initial statements ... indicate[s] that her subsequent memory for having heard the names during the attack was likely the result of postevent suggestion.”
Franklin’s report also said that Watson’s failure to select Minton from the first photo array “carries diagnostic evidence of his innocence.” She said that Watson’s selection of Minton in the live lineup was likely “contaminated” by this earlier exposure. At the live lineup, Franklin said, Watson didn’t make an initial identification and then asked to look at Minton and another person. Watson then ruled out the second person based on body type. Franklin called this method “talking oneself into identification.”
At trial, Watson said she didn’t pick Minton from the photo array because her eyes were swollen. Franklin said that explanation indicated “hindsight bias;” That same day, Franklin noted, Watson had written a statement and selected Manning from a photo array.
Cutler’s report said that Minton’s interrogation contained many of the factors that can lead to a defendant falsely inculpating themselves. The detectives used a full range of interrogative techniques on Minton, maximizing his involvement in the reported crime and minimizing the consequences he would face if he confessed.
Cutler noted Minton’s cognitive deficits and said that such persons were more susceptible to pressure, especially when applied by an authority figure.
Cutler’s report also said that Minton’s confession appeared unreliable because of its sparseness. “During the interrogation, many of the details of the crime were essentially spoon-fed to Mr. Minton, who was able to produce very little information independently,” the report said.
The petition for the writ of error took another tack. Instead of arguing that Watson had been mistaken in her identification of Minton, the petition suggested that the reported crime might have been a hoax, part of a wider scheme by Watson to steal money from her parents and get out from under her financial problems.
The petition detailed Watson’s increasingly elaborate and ever-more graphic accounts of the crime as well as the lack of evidence connecting the defendants to the incident. It also included the allegations of Watson’s dishonesty that Manning tried to introduce at her trial.
In addition, the petition said other parts of Watson’s testimony didn’t add up. For example, the petition asked why Watson called a neighbor and then got back down on the floor, naked beneath a blanket.
During the investigation, a sheriff’s deputy had sketched out the cylinder of the .22 pistol that Watson said she used after she was shot. The fourth and eighth chambers were empty. Greg Kinman, a firearms expert, said in a report that the configuration was inconsistent with Watson’s testimony. Watson never testified that she opened the cylinder, and Kinman said, “If the gun had been fired consecutively, you would expect two consecutive chambers to contain spent bullets.”
The petition also included a report by Dr. Shana Dowell, a gynecologist with extensive experience examining rape victims. Dowell’s report said that she found it “notable that none of the medical records from that day document the type of injuries that I would expect to see based on Ms. Watson’s recitation of the action taken against her.”
Judge Amanda Dunn held a three-day evidentiary hearing on both the PCR motion and the writ petition in October 2024. By then, Watson and Blaylock were both dead.
Franklin and Cutler each testified about their reports, and a parade of witnesses—including three of Watson’s children—testified about Watson’s lack of truthfulness and various ways she had taken money from them or others.
Several of Minton’s alibi witnesses testified at the hearing. Alan Ruddick, one of the employees at the auto parts store, testified that he knew Minton from earlier purchases. He also testified that in 1993, Rhea County had a law preventing most stores, including the auto parts store, from opening before 10 a.m. on Sunday. He knew that October 31 was a “fall back” day, but that wouldn’t have made a difference about when the store opened.
Manning had been released from prison in 2018. She testified at the hearing that she had blocked out her memories of the events but had been pressured into making a false confession. She had testified at her own trial that she only confessed after Benefield read her Minton’s confession.
Jack Ryan, a former captain in the Providence Police Department in Rhode Island, testified as an expert on police procedures. He said that the investigation was “one of the worst I’ve seen.” The detectives did a poor job documenting their investigation and failed to obtain fingerprints from the crime scene or get Watson’s rape kit analyzed. He said they ignored Minton’s independent alibi witnesses and didn’t track down obvious potential witnesses, such as the ferry workers who would have seen Minton, Blaylock, and Manning on the Sunday they were said to have committed the crime.
On December 10, 2024, Judge Dunn granted Minton’s motion for post-conviction relief and vacated his conviction. In a separate order that day, she denied his petition for a writ of error coram nobis.
In the first ruling, Judge Dunn said that Minton shouldn’t have been placed in the first photo array. He didn’t resemble Watson’s description; his only connection to the reported crime was his friendship with Blaylock. That flawed viewing, Judge Dunn wrote, made it more likely that Watson would select Minton from the live lineup, particularly based on the encouragement provided by the detectives conducting the lineup. The ruling also said that Minton’s confession was contaminated, “ because the officers essentially provided many of the details of the attack on Ms. Watson and [Minton] simply agreed that those were the facts.”
The ruling said that Cutler’s testimony does not establish actual innocence, but “ provides further evidence to this Court that Petitioner was actually innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted.”
The ruling did not address the DNA evidence.
In the order denying the writ petition, Judge Dunn wrote that the extensive evidence undermining Watson’s credibility would have resulted in a different result at the trial. “Based on the new evidence and facts presented, it is unclear if a crime occurred, but it is abundantly clear that Mr. Minton had absolutely nothing to do with the events in Bradley County on October 31, 1993,” she wrote. That said, Judge Dunn wrote that it was with “regret” that she could not grant the petition because the issues it raised could have been presented at trial.
Minton was released from prison on December 18, 2024.
On January 23, 2025, the state dismissed the charges against Minton. Tenth Judicial District Attorney Stephen Hatchett said that it was not possible to proceed, because Watson was dead and the detectives on the case were no longer available.
“This has been a long, emotionally grueling fight for Mr. Minton, who had 30 years of his life stolen,” said Adnan Sultan, a senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project. “Law enforcement’s tunnel vision led them to pressure a vulnerable man into confessing to a crime he could not have done—a fact corroborated by a staggering 18 alibi witnesses. We are thrilled Mr. Minton is finally free, but he should have never been convicted in the first place.”
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 05-01-2025
Last Update Date: 05-01-2025
