Picture imperfect
A mug shot and a misidentification almost sent a Kentucky man to death row.

By Paula Reed Ward, Savannahnow.com

A traffic stop could have cost him his life.

Arrested for speeding and driving on a suspended license in Coffee County, Tenn., Tommicus Joyce's mug shot was in the county's criminal records system.

And that landed his picture in a randomly generated photo lineup three months later in connection with a double homicide 510 miles away, in Liberty County.

Two suspects in that 1998 case — who promised their cooperation to avoid the death penalty — identified Joyce as one of the shooters. And though it was the only evidence against him, Liberty County officials charged the father of four with two counts of capital murder and vowed to seek the death penalty. His trial was due to start tomorrow.

But just two weeks before jury selection was to begin, Assistant District Attorney Lewis Groover moved to dismiss the charges.

They had the wrong man.

Botched robbery

Sammy Walthour Jr., and Edward Morgan both died from a single shot to the head. It was a robbery gone bad.

The two young men were in Walthour's mobile home in Midway when they were attacked late in the evening of May 12, 1998.

The killers hog-tied Walthour with duct tape and string before he was shot. Investigators believe he managed to crawl to his aunt's yard next door before he died.

Police found Morgan's body in the living room of the trailer. He had not been tied.

Twenty-seven months later, in September 2000, Liberty County investigators finally got a break in the case.

They arrested Sean Stewart, the attempted robbery's "mastermind." Though living in Atlanta at the time of the killings, Stewart reportedly knew Walthour from previous drug deals. Police believe he and three others made the four-hour drive from the capital to carry out the plan.

After his arrest, Stewart named Chris Hanna as the driver of the van that night. Hanna, too, was charged.

Both men then made a deal with prosecutors to identify and testify against the other two suspects. In exchange, their lives would be spared.

Both named Keiotta Tubbs, of Tennessee, as one of the backseat passengers.

But they couldn't identify the fourth man beyond a first name — "Justin" or "Justice."

Hanna and Stewart allegedly told police Tubbs and the other man went into the house. While they waited in the car, they said, they heard gun shots.

Based on their statements, Liberty County Sheriff's Detective Marty Adams called the Coffee County, Tenn., Sheriff's Department, and asked for a photo lineup with Tubbs' picture in it.

Fateful picture

In May 1998, Tommicus Joyce and his girlfriend, Fleshia Poteet, were preparing for the birth of their son. They had just moved from Tennessee to Bowling Green, Ky. They'd remodeled their house and bought new furniture. They redid the baby's room.

Their lives were right on track.

The weekend before Walthour and Morgan died, Joyce's grandmother, Peggy Anglin, of Nashville, came to visit.

They all remember taking lots of photographs and eating breakfast Sunday morning at the Cracker Barrel.

The day of the slayings, Poteet took lunch to Joyce at his roofing job.

Later they went to a Lamaze class together in Bowling Green. There were also other signs he was in Kentucky. That day, his car was towed from his driveway.

The towing receipt is dated May 12, 1998. The customer's name, filled out by the tow truck driver, is "Tommy."

More than a month later, on June 15, Tommy Jr. was born. Their lives followed the patterns they always had - work, children, one another.

In December, Joyce was pulled over in nearby Coffee County and charged with driving on a suspended license. As part of that procedure, police booked him — and took his mug shot.

Two years later, that picture — through random, computer-generation — wound up in the lineup requested by Liberty County to build a case against Keiotta Tubbs.

It was also the same photo Sean Stewart and Chris Hanna picked when they identified the fourth man in the shootings.

Pressing on

When Detective Marty Adams first showed the lineup to Stewart and Hanna, they identified Tubbs as the third suspect.

Later, when they were re-interviewed and shown the lineup again, the two men — one in jail and one out on bond — identified the fourth man — Joyce.

"I had some concerns," Adams said of the identification. "There were some reservations on this case from the get-go." But not enough to halt the investigation.

Adams had specifically requested Tubbs in the six-person lineup - and no one else. Typically, two suspects in the same case are not included in the same lineup.

Adams remembers asking himself after Stewart and Hanna identified Joyce: "Why now? Why, all of a sudden, now?"

The state pressed on. As far as investigators were concerned, they had their fourth man — Tommicus Joyce.

On Nov. 26, 2001, Joyce called his grandmother to ask her to pick his twins up from school. Peggy Anglin told him a detective from Liberty County had called to talk to him but wouldn't say why.

Joyce called the detective and said he'd turn himself in to clear the matter up. He never got the chance. Just as he hung up, he was surrounded by FBI agents, arrested and taken to the Nashville jail.

Under indictment

From the start, Joyce denied involvement in the killings.

Questioned in Nashville two days after his arrest, he told Adams and GBI Special Agent Gerald Hill he'd been in Georgia just once — on a bus in 1996 en route to Disney World.

He told investigators he didn't know the other defendants and had never been to Hinesville. Joyce recounted, as best he could, what he'd been doing in May 1998. He named people who could vouch for him.

"Joyce stated he was willing to take a polygraph test and do anything necessary in order to clear his name in reference to this case," Hill wrote in his report from the interview.

Joyce was extradited to Liberty County about a week later and given that test. After a detective administered it, he left the room, saying he'd be back. He returned seconds later, and told Joyce the results showed he lied.

"I said, 'I don't know who you are, but I can tell by looking in your eyes, you're telling me a bold-faced lie,'" Joyce recalled.

Over the next several months, Joyce was held in the Liberty County jail. He heard more about the shootings, and got a detailed description of the fourth suspect.

That person — "Justin" or "Justice" — was described as 6 feet 2 inches, with dreadlocks. He was reportedly on probation or parole and had a tattoo on his left arm. He lived in Atlanta.

Joyce is 6 feet tall and has always had closely cropped hair. He has never been on probation or parole. He has no tattoos. He has never lived in Atlanta.

"Even a child with no investigative skills could confirm that," Joyce said.

Despite his claims of innocence — and assertions that witnesses' descriptions did not match him — police charged Joyce. He was indicted in February 2002 on two counts of murder.

Two days later, the district attorney announced his intention to seek the death penalty.

"When they served the death penalty warrant on me... it's indescribable," Joyce said. "I wish the feeling on no one. It was like I lost all sense of reality.

"But God is good, though. And He's carried me."

Nagging doubts

With no money for investigators, Joyce's court-appointed defense attorneys had to rely on their client's family to help them prove his innocence.

Poteet and Anglin spent endless hours tracking down people who saw Joyce the day of the shootings and piecing together the paper trail to show he was in Bowling Green — not Hinesville — the day of the attack.

Poteet had medical records verifying the couple's birthing classes. And Anglin documented much of Joyce's life using monthly statements from her American Express card. That was how she found the tow truck receipt.

But police weren't convinced.

Adams said he checked out Joyce's story but added: "At the time, I thought we were more accurate than he was. There was evidence we were on the right track."

But he couldn't elaborate on what that evidence was.

Prosecutor Groover, though, admits the case was built on nothing more than Stewart's and Hanna's identification of Joyce.

"Those are two eyewitnesses who sat four hours in a van together, driving down and planning the crime together," he said. "I had two people positively identifying him. I couldn't disregard that."

But Joyce's defense attorneys, Terry Jackson and Richard Braun, say that's exactly what should have happened.

"They're trying to kill this guy based on two perjurers," Jackson said. "It was just unbelievable."

In all his years as a prosecutor, Groover said he never questioned a defendant's guilt — until Joyce.

"I always had a little bit of a doubt myself," Groover said.

Adams shared that doubt.

Even after the arrests, he continued to dig for more evidence.

"This was a real important case, and that's why I stuck on it as long as I did," Adams said.

The week of July 20 — just a month before Joyce's trial was to start — Adams located the witness he had been trying to find for five years.

That man, a DeKalb County jail inmate, told Adams what he'd needed to hear all along.

"It turns out he knows all of the facts about the case because he's talked to the real participant," Groover said.

That revelation led to a new suspect, currently in federal custody. He'll likely be charged in the 1998 slayings within a few weeks, Groover said.

The prosecution is expected to seek the death penalty.

Prosecutors plan to use Stewart's and Hanna's testimony — this time to try to convict the new suspect.

They must testify truthfully in that case, as well as in Tubbs', to avoid the threat of capital punishment themselves. But that's an arrangement both are familiar with.

"If they lead us on the wrong trail, we'll start all over from the beginning," Groover said.

But it might be hard to build a case on the word of two such men. Adams said Stewart and Hanna might not have lied when they fingered Joyce. Maybe they were just mistaken, he added.

"Mistakes happen," he said. "It could be that's who they described, and that's who they thought he was."

Unexpected freedom

Joyce was stunned when he learned the charges against him had been dropped.

But his release didn't erase what had happened to him.

He spent almost two years in jail — awaiting a trial that could have led to his execution.

"It's terrifying what happened," Terry Jackson said. "But it's wonderful that it's gotten resolved. I've had over 50 death penalty cases, and I've never heard of them dismissing the charges. I really have to take my hat off to them for being honest. That really took some gumption."

Joyce is less impressed.

"I think it was shoddy police work at the beginning," Joyce said. "I think once they realized their mistake, it was corruption at its finest."

He believes detectives never checked out his alibi. He believes their work was negligent.

Adams said he was simply doing his job, verifying information he got from witnesses.

He's pleased, though, the charges against Joyce have been dropped.

"On one hand, I felt terrible," he said. "On the other, I felt real good, because hopefully, we've let the right man go."

Not long now

Even with the charges dropped, Tommy Joyce is still in jail.

On Tuesday, he was flown back to Tennessee by Nashville police, who are holding him on a charge of aggravated child abuse and an outstanding speeding ticket.

He has a $50,000 bond. He claims the child abuse charge stems from a disagreement with his ex-girlfriend, who was trying to win back custody of their twins. The Nashville district attorney won't comment on the case. He said public documents on the charge wouldn't be available for at least two weeks.

Joyce is still confident that situation will be cleared up.

"I see light at the end of the tunnel," Joyce said. "I think it won't be long now."

The 32-year-old says when he does get out he'll spend a lot of time with his family. His children are two years older than when he was last free. The twins, Ciera and Ciarius, are 7 now. Tommy Jr., is 5. His youngest daughter, Charlsty, is almost 2.

She was born while he was in jail, and he's gotten to hold her only once — in court.

And though his girlfriend sent him packages at least once a week with photos, and the kids' school work and papers, he's missed a lot. "Life is a lot more precious now," he said.

Joyce also hopes to focus his efforts on trying to prevent what happened to him from happening to someone else.

But even if he manages all that, he can never really get past what happened in Liberty County.

"The arrest will always be on his record," said Aimee Maxwell, the executive director of the Georgia Innocence Project. "For his entire life, he'll have to explain where he was for those 21 months."