
On august 5, 1981 in Memphis, Philip Workman came into a Wendy's restaurant with a 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. Obviously, his aim was to commit a robbery to get enough money to support his cocaine habit. What really happened? Philip Workman doesn't remember very well, being on drugs that night. But the policeman who confronted him after the burglary, Lt Ronald Oliver has been shot down and was lying on the floor, dead.
Lt Ronald Oliver
Workman admitted to the robbery, but said he was trying to surrender when he lose consciousness, after he was hit over the head. Falling down, he fired on, but his gun discharged in the air, Workman said.
Philip Workman himself has really been wounded and Hospital records show he has been treated for "shotgun pellets to buttocks", something Workman can't recall, as he said at his trial.
The bullet which shot Olivier- a 45 calliber hollow-point- came from Workman's gun, according to an FBI expert.
But Workman's lawyers obtained an affidavit in 1995 from Georgia's chief medical examiner, Dr Kris Sperry, who said that type of bullet (silver-tip, hollow-point bulet) expands upon impact and leaves an exit wound larger than the entrance wound. The pathologist said the bullet that killet Oliver passed through his body and left an exit wound smaller than the entry wound. That bullet was never found.
And a witness, Memphis native Harold Davis, suddently appeared.
He was the only one, that night, in area Wendy's. The prosecution presented only one witness at the trial and this witness did fix Workman's fate.
Harold Davis testified he was parked outside the Wendy's and saw the altercation, got down on the ground and witnessed the shooting. And the shooter was...Philip Workman.
Well! Harold Davis "virtually saw the whole thing" a procuror told jurors.
Wait..There is a little problem. Davis' car isn't visible in photos taken of the crime scene, and it doesn't show up in police diagrams. More: no one saw him, not even the police officer who had been warned to be on the lookout for an African-American man who had been robbing area Wendy's (and Harold Davis is African-American). "I didn't see him", officer Stoddads admits. And a source deeply involved in the police investigation tells NewsChannel 5: "I never believed that Harold Davis was there".
Recently Workman's lawyers say he should not be executed if he didn't fire the fatal shot, but Attorney General Paul Summers said in an interview (september 1999) that Workman would still be guilty of felony murder -and still subject to the death penalty- because he committed the robbery that led to Olivier's death. JUST INCREDIBLE! IT'S JUSTICE DENIED!
Go to: the Trial

For further informations on the case, click on this URL:
http://www.law.emory.edu/6circuit/oct98/98a0322p.06.html
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