In 1993 Debra Reese was found dead in her home in Jacksonville, Arkansas. She was strangled to death, and had been beaten with a wooden bat that her husband gave her to protect herself. In October of 1995, Reese’s neighbor Ledell Lee was charged for first-degree murder and was put on deathrow. Multiple people in the neighborhood said that they saw Lee near her home on the day of the act, and he was immediately arrested. Throughout his trial and sentence he claimed innocence, Lee was executed in April of 2017. 

The Innocence Project and the ACLU have investigated Lee’s case since his execution, they have collected new evidence and analyzed the original evidence as well. They claim that they could prove that an innocent man was executed with what they have collected. Although organizations have agreed to pay for it to be done, local authorities have refused to do DNA testing on the new evidence, and will not run the fingerprints from the scene through the national database. His sister Patricia Young has filed a lawsuit against the authorities petitioning for them to release crime scene materials to her family. His family is trying to prove that Ledell Lee was wrongfully executed.