Wrongfully Convicted Man Finds Freedom with Help from Private Investigator and Innocence Project

GREENWOOD, Ark. (AP) — Ricky Dority spends most of his days playing with his grandchildren, feeding chickens, and working in the yard where he lives with his son’s family.

It’s a jarring change from where he was just several months ago, locked in a cell serving a life prison sentence at Oklahoma’s Joseph Harp Correctional Center in a killing he said he didn’t commit. After over two decades behind bars, Dority had no chance at being released — until he used his pandemic relief funds to hire a determined private investigator.

The investigator and students at the Oklahoma Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University, dedicated to exonerating wrongful convictions in the state, found inconsistencies in the state’s account of a 1997 cold-case killing, leading to Dority’s conviction being vacated in June by a Sequoyah County judge.

Now, the 65-year-old enjoys the 5-acre property in a quiet neighborhood of upscale homes in the rolling, forested hills of the Arkansas River Valley outside of Fort Smith. “If you’ve been gone for many years, you learn not to take it for granted anymore,” Dority shared.

Dority is one of nearly 3,400 individuals who have been exonerated across the country since 1989, primarily for murder convictions, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. In Oklahoma, there have been over 43 exonerations during that time, excluding the three new exonerations this year.

These cases highlight the serious problem afflicting a judicial system in which many old convictions resulted from overwhelmed defense attorneys, flawed forensic work, overly zealous prosecutors, and outdated investigative techniques.

The issue is particularly pressing in Oklahoma, known for its history of sending people to death row, where 11 inmates have been exonerated since 1981. This problem has prompted a legislative panel led by Republicans to consider implementing a death penalty moratorium.

In Oklahoma County, Glynn Ray Simmons was released after spending nearly 50 years in prison, including time on death row, for a 1974 killing after a judge determined that prosecutors had failed to disclose evidence, including a police report suggesting an eyewitness may have identified other suspects.

Just this week, Perry Lott, who served over 30 years in prison, had his rape and burglary conviction overturned in Pontotoc County after new DNA testing excluded him as the perpetrator. Pontotoc County, in particular, has faced intense scrutiny due to a series of wrongful convictions in the 1980s that have been the subject of numerous books, including John Grisham’s “The Innocent Man,” which was adapted into a six-part documentary on Netflix.

The most common causes of wrongful convictions, according to the Innocence Project, a national organization based in New York, are eyewitness misidentification, faulty forensic science, false confessions, coerced pleas, and official misconduct, primarily by police or prosecutors.

In Dority’s case, he claimed he was wrongly accused by an overly zealous sheriff and a state prosecutor eager to solve the killing of 28-year-old Mitchell Nixon, who was found beaten to death in 1997.

Investigators who reopened the case in 2014 coerced a confession from another man, Rex Robbins, according to Andrea Miller, the legal director of the Oklahoma Innocence Project. Robbins, who eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Nixon’s killing, implicated Dority, who was serving time in a federal prison on a firearms conviction at the time. Dority maintained his innocence and discovered evidence proving he had been arrested on the day of the murder.

“I thought I was clear because I knew I didn’t have anything to do with that murder,” Dority said. “But they tried me for it and found me guilty of it.”

Jurors heard Robbins’ confession and testimony from a police informant who claimed Dority had changed into bloody clothes at his house on the night of the killing. They convicted Dority of first-degree murder and recommended a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.

While most inmates used their federal COVID-19 relief checks in the commissary, Dority used his to hire a private investigator, Bobby Staton. Although Staton primarily investigated insurance fraud, he took on Dority’s case and quickly realized it was riddled with inconsistencies.

Eventually, Staton and Abby Brawner, a law student assigned by the Oklahoma Innocence Project, visited Robbins in the maximum-security Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite, where he recanted his statement implicating Dority.

“It was quite intimidating,” Brawner shared. “Especially when you’re going to meet someone who isn’t expecting you and doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Brawner and Staton also discovered that the police informant did not reside at the home where he claimed Dority had changed into bloody clothes. During a hearing this summer, the actual homeowner testified, leading the judge to dismiss the case.

The judge criticized Dority’s original attorneys for failing to discover that the informant did not live at the residence. Prosecutors have 90 days to decide whether they will retry Dority, but the deadline has been extended. They also plan to request more time for DNA testing. Dority, confident in his innocence, is not concerned about additional forensic testing.

Sequoyah County District Attorney Jack Thorp and former Sheriff Ron Lockhart did not respond to requests for comment. However, Assistant District Attorney James Dunn, who is overseeing the case and was not involved when it was originally prosecuted, agreed with the judge’s decision to dismiss the charges after hearing the homeowner’s testimony and deeming a witness “not credible.”

“The last thing I want to see is an innocent person in prison for a crime they didn’t commit,” Dunn said. “Because that means the person or persons who actually committed the crime are still out there.”

In the meantime, Dority is learning to use a smartphone and a television remote control. He is grateful to Staton and the Innocence Project and believes his case demonstrates that there are others wrongfully imprisoned in Oklahoma.

“After what they did to me, I know there are people in that prison who are innocent and need to be freed and need assistance in doing so,” he stated. “If they hadn’t helped me, I would have spent the rest of my life behind bars.”