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Betty Tyson

Other New York False Confession Cases
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On the morning of May 25, 1973, the body of 52-year-old Timothy Haworth was found in an alley in downtown Rochester, New York. Haworth’s pockets had been emptied, and an autopsy would later say that Haworth had been strangled with his own necktie and been severely beaten on histhe head and his chest. Weeds were stuffed in his mouth, and a brick rested on his neck.

Haworth, a management consultant from Pennsylvania, was in town to work with Kodak Corp. During their investigation, officers with the Rochester Police Department learned that Haworth had left his hotel around midnight and walked about 10 blocks east, to an area known for sex trafficking.

The police began interviewing the sex workers who congregated in that area. Their list included 24-year-old Betty Tyson. When police first tried to question her, on May 27, Tyson drove off but was arrested after she flipped her car. Later that day, police arrested 21-year-old John Duval, another sex worker, who dressed as a woman. Duval gave a statement on May 28 that he and Tyson robbed and killed Haworth after he paid them for performing sex acts on him. Tyson gave a similar statement. They were each charged with murder, first-degree robbery, and larceny.

Two young sex workers, 18-year-old Jon Jackson and 16-year-old Wayne Wright, were also said to have told police that Duval told them about the murder while they were at an all-night restaurant not far from the crime scene. The police held Jackson and Wright as material witnesses.

Duval and Tyson were tried separately, and Duval’s trial began in October 1973. Prior to the trial’s start, Duval moved to suppress the statement he made to the police, saying he had been threatened and abused during questioning. Justice Donald Mark of Monroe County Supreme Court denied the motion. The trial began on October 17.

The state’s case, according to extensive coverage in the Democrat & Chronicle of Rochester, was built around the statements that Duval and Tyson had signed, as well as the testimony of Jackson and Wright.

Jackson testified that he saw Haworth talk with Tyson and then get into a car with her and Duval. About 20 minutes later, Jackson said, Duval called him and Wright into the restaurant’s restroom and told him that they had “some trouble, with you know, the trick.” He said the trouble concerned Haworth finding out that Duval wasn’t a woman.

During cross-examination, Duval’s attorney asked Jackson, “Didn’t you tell me that the police told you if you didn’t sign [the statement] they’d charge you with murder?”

“Yes,” Jackson testified.

Monroe County Medical Examiner Dr. John Edland testified that the necktie used to strangle Haworth was so tight that it had to be cut off. He also testified that Haworth had been hit five times and had 16 broken ribs, eight on each side. In addition, the jury heard Duval’s statement, and several police officers testified that his interrogation was proper and without violence or threats.

Tyson testified as a defense witness. She testified that she left her apartment at about 3:30 a.m. and then was paid to perform a sex act with a man in his late 30s. She later met Duval, and they used heroin together at about 8 a.m. Tyson testified she worked alone and would not have worked with Duval, because he was gay.

Tyson testified that when she and Duval were brought in for questioning, she could hear him hollering in the next room and an officer telling him that the police knew he killed Haworth. Tyson’s testimony allowed prosecutors to introduce into evidence the statement she made to police. Tyson’s attorney objected on the grounds that Tyson was entitled to a hearing before her own trial on whether her statement was made voluntarily. Duval’s attorney objected because Tyson’s statement inculpated his client. Justice Mark allowed the statement to be used for impeachment purposes against Tyson.

Each time, as the prosecutor asked Tyson about a section of her statement, Tyson’s attorney would instruct her not to answer the question. The prosecutor would then ask Tyson if she was asserting her right against self-incrimination, and Tyson said she was.

Fred Clay, Tyson’s boyfriend, testified that he was at the police station and saw Duval being beaten as he walked past his interrogation room. “There’s no question she was being beaten in every possible way,” he said.

Carl Hill Jr., who had been interviewed by the police in the investigation, testified he also heard Duval being beaten. “The police wanted him to say something,” Hill testified. “When he didn’t say it, they hit him.”

Duval testified that he had sex at a Holiday Inn with a man for $20 on the night Haworth died but had never seen Haworth. He testified that he confessed only after the police beat him and threatened to kill him. In his statement, Duval testified, he just repeated a story he heard on the streets.

During cross-examination, the prosecutor attacked Duval’s alibi and the shifting versions of his stories. Duval said he was under the influence of drugs at the time and got his days mixed up. After Duval testified that he had never tried to influence anyone’s testimony, prosecutors introduced evidence that he had written Jackson and asked him to vouch for Duval’s whereabouts.

On October 31, 19793, the jury convicted Duval of manslaughter, murder, grand larceny, and two counts of robbery. He was later sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Tyson’s trial began on December 13, 1973, also in Monroe County Supreme Court, and presided over by Justice Hyman Maas. The state’s case largely followed Duval’s trial, with Jackson and Wright testifying about what they said they saw outside the restaurant and what they said Duval told them later.

Detective William Mahoney testified about the statement Tyson made to police. He said it was signed after Tyson had been in custody for 12 hours, and that Tyson was not mistreated in any manner during her interrogation.

In Tyson’s statement, she said that she and Duval performed sex acts on Haworth, who paid them $15 apiece. Duval noticed how much money Haworth had, Tyson said, and tried to rob him. The two men struggled in the car, and then Duval picked up a brick and hit Haworth in the head. They took his wallet and dragged him out of the car. Tyson said she saw Duval choke Haworth with Haworth’s tie. Haworth was screaming, Tyson said in the statement, and she shoved some weeds in his mouth to shut him up.

The state sought to introduce excerpts of Tyson’s testimony from Duval’s trial. Her attorney objected and said he would read her entire testimony. The state then withdrew its request to introduce the excerpts.

David Roby testified that he was with Tyson and Clay, her boyfriend, at around 2 a.m. on the morning Haworth’s body was found. Roby said he remembered the event, because Tyson helped him shoot up heroin when he had trouble finding a vein. Later, at about 3 a.m., Roby said, Tyson left to get him a sandwich. Another man, Darnell Massey, testified he was also at the apartment and saw Tyson helping Roby inject drugs. At the time of their testimony, both Roby and Massey were in jail on unrelated charges.

Clay testified that Tyson was with him from the early evening of May 24 to about 3:30 a.m. on May 25. He said she left the house about 3:30 a.m. Clay said that when he woke up at about 8 a.m., Tyson, Roby, and Massey were there. In addition, Clay said that Duval was on the couch.

Tyson testified that she was not involved with Haworth’s death. She said that she had spent the evening with Clay and had taken heroin, although she couldn’t remember whether she helped Roby inject any drugs. She said she left the apartment at around 4 a.m. and met Duval at the all-night restaurant. While there, she agreed to perform a sex act with a man in his 30s who was driving a truck. She and Duval then returned to her apartment.

Tyson testified that the police hit her and threatened to kill her if she didn’t sign a statement. “They told (me) that if I didn’t sign the statement, me or Duval would be found in the ditch,” Tyson said. “[Detective Joseph] Perticone says, ‘Sign it bitch.’ I said no so he started pulling my hair … he told me again. I would be found in the ditch. Then he said sign it, so I signed it.”

A Monroe County chemist testified that the tire tracks found near Haworth’s body did not “match” the tires of the car Tyson was driving at the time of her arrest.

On December 28, 1973, the jury convicted Tyson of murder, manslaughter, robbery, grand larceny, and reckless endangerment. The last count was based on testimony that she tried to run over a police officer during the car chase prior to her arrest. Like Duval, Tyson was also sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Duval appealed, but the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division affirmed the conviction in 1974. Tyson’s conviction was affirmed on appeal in 1976.

After the trials, Wright and Jackson left Rochester and moved to California. Wright moved back to the city in the mid-1980s. After returning, he told family members that he had testified falsely at the two trials. In June 1997, he recanted in a letter to the governor of New York. Nothing came of that. Separately, Gary Craig, a reporter with the Democrat & Chronicle, had been investigating police misconduct in Rochester and began digging into Tyson’s case and tracked down Wright. Craig’s story, which ran on November 23, 1997, detailed Wright’s recantation, which said that he and Jackson were at Duval’s apartment when Duval was told the police were looking for him. Wright and Jackson accompanied Duval to the station and both young men went inside upon the request of the officers.

“That was the biggest mistake of my life,” Wright told the newspaper. He said the officers, including Mahoney, said he could be charged with the killing and would be raped in prison. (Mahoney was convicted in federal court in 1980 of fabricating evidence in four unrelated cases.) Wright said the officers helped draft his statement and then he and Jackson worked together to make sure their statement aligned.

On February 27, 1998, Tyson, now represented by Jon Betz, moved for a new trial, based on Wright’s recantation and statements from law-enforcement officials asserting that Mahoney’s misconduct stretched back to the mid-1970s.

In preparing its response, the Monroe County District Attorney’s Office discovered police files that prosecutors said neither they nor Tyson’s trial attorney had seen in 1973. One file was about alternate suspects, a ring of sex workers who were mugging “johns” in the area where Haworth was found. The search also located a police report of an early interview with Jackson, where he said he never saw Haworth.

On May 21, 1998, Justice John Connell of Monroe County Supreme Court threw out Tyson’s conviction. He said the police report on Jackson would have provided Tyson’s trial attorney with evidence to impeach Jackson’s testimony about the events surrounding Haworth’s death and could have led to a different jury verdict.

Tyson was released from prison on May 27, 1998. The state quickly moved to dismiss the charge, which Justice Connell granted on May 29. He praised Tyson for her work counseling women with AIDS and serving as a mentor to young, female prisoners. Tyson had spent more than 24 years in prison, at the time the longest incarceration for a female exoneree in New York.

“The last time I was in front of a judge, he was telling me what a disgrace I was,” Tyson said. “This judge, he welcomed me back to the community with open arms.”

Duval’s conviction was vacated on April 6, 1999, also based on the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence. He was released from prison on April 16, 1999. The state chose to retry him, in part because Duval had twice told the Parole Board he was guilty of the crime. (He would say that he falsely told the board that he killed Haworth in an effort to be released.)

Duval’s retrial began in January 2000. He was now represented by Gilda Sherrod-Ali, who was Duval’s cousin.

Two retired Rochester police detectives testified about Duval’s statements in custody, saying that they never told Duval what to say. During her cross-examination, Sherrod-Ali walked the detectives through Duval’s shifting account of the crime. One detective’s hand-written account said that Duval dragged Haworth by the shoulders. Only in the final statement did Duval say he dragged Haworth by his tie. In addition, that earlier version made no mention of a soda can found on Haworth’s chest. The final version did, with Duval saying that Tyson placed the container there.

Wright now testified for the defense that his statement against Duval was the product of coercion and threats by Mahoney, who had died a year after his conviction. (Justice David Egan would deny a request by the jury to review Mahoney’s testimony from the first trial.)

Sherrod-Ali also presented new forensic evidence about Haworth’s injuries. A retired medical examiner testified that Haworth’s ribs had uniform injuries that would be unusual from a beating but more likely to be the result of an automobile running over a person.

The jury acquitted Duval on February 2, 2000. “I held my faith and I waited … 27 years for this day to come, for my side of the story to be told,” Duval said.

Tyson settled a lawsuit with the City of Rochester for $1.2 million. Duval filed for a claim under New York’s compensation statute, but it was dismissed. Duval died in 2006.

– Ken Otterbourg

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Posting Date:  Before June 2012
Last Updated: 11/15/2024
State:New York
County:Monroe
Most Serious Crime:Murder
Additional Convictions:Manslaughter, Robbery, Other Violent Felony, Theft
Reported Crime Date:1973
Convicted:1973
Exonerated:1998
Sentence:25 to Life
Race/Ethnicity:Black
Sex:Female
Age at the date of reported crime:24
Contributing Factors:False Confession, Perjury or False Accusation, Official Misconduct
Did DNA evidence contribute to the exoneration?:No