Terry Talley

Troup County, GA | 1981

Terry Talley spent roughly 40 years wrongfully imprisoned for several crimes he did not commit.

How does an innocent Black man get convicted of a series of brutally violent crimes that he did not commit? The answer lies in the power of tainted eyewitness identification, a blinding determination by the State to convict, and systemic racial bias. Add to that an under-resourced public defender system, set in the 1980’s Deep South, and you have an infallible recipe for wrongful conviction.

From February through June 1981, five violent sexual assaults took place on campus and in the vicinity of LaGrange College. Almost all of the victims were White women, and similarities across the attacks led investigators to believe the assaults were committed by a sole Black male perpetrator.

Around the same time, several female LaGrange College students filed complaints of inappropriate and threatening behavior by a Black male city employee who spent a lot of time on campus. Gloves found at one of the crime scenes reportedly were the same as the employee’s gloves; the gloves later disappeared. Police suspended and ultimately fired the employee based on his conduct. However, Talley’s trial lawyers were never informed about the employee’s behavior, or the subsequent investigation and termination. Law enforcement also apparently never included the employee in any eyewitness identification procedures shown to the victims or witnesses of the violent assaults, despite being aware of the allegations made against him.

Under immense pressure from the community to solve the crimes, authorities zeroed in on Terry Talley, who was arrested in a separate, unrelated incident involving an attempt to pay for sex. Despite no evidence tying him to the five violent crime scenes, lead investigators from the LaGrange Police Department (LGPD) and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) put him in photographic and in-person lineups for witnesses to identify him.

Talley adamantly denied any role in the serial rape cases. Trials convened only three months later and were characterized by profoundly unreliable eyewitness identifications, rampant official misconduct, and racial bias. In just over 48 hours, Talley was convicted in two separate trials of two different rapes and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.  Defeated in the realization that his innocence would not lead to his acquittal, Talley then pled to the remaining charges and has been incarcerated for the past 40 years, all the while fighting to prove his innocence.

After accepting Talley’s case in 2004, GIP secured analysis of male DNA collected from one victim’s rape kit, which revealed Talley was not the donor. Troup County Superior Court Judge Baldwin granted Talley a new trial in that case in February 2013, but the underlying indictment was not dismissed. The other serial rape convictions remained intact, and Talley remained imprisoned, stymied by lost or destroyed evidence and shifting State theories. Recently, based on new investigations and with support from LaGrange Police Chief Lou Dekmar, GIP presented Talley’s case for innocence to Coweta Judicial District Attorney Herb Cranford, Jr. who then joined GIP in securing four exonerations on February 23, 2021.

Timeline of Events

February 7, 1981

Victim 1 (White female) was in her dorm room on the LaGrange campus when she was grabbed from behind by a Black male. She struggled with the assailant, who then choked her until she lost consciousness. She awoke with a pillow cover over her head and continued to fight back until the perpetrator left.

Case status: Talley exonerated.

February 21, 1981

Two weeks later in the same dorm, Victim 2 (White female) was awakened in her room around 2:30 a.m. by a Black male who began to choke her. The assailant struck her repeatedly, dislocating her jaw, and held her down while sexually assaulting her. The assailant fled through a window when Victim 2’s roommate knocked on the door. A pair of black gloves was found in the victim’s room.

Case status: Talley exonerated.

April 19, 1981

Victim 3 (White female) reported to police that she answered a knock on the door from someone claiming to be her son. Instead, a Black male grabbed and choked her as he pushed her into the bedroom where he bound one of her hands, attempted to smother her with a pillow, and sexually assaulted her. She also reported to police that the attacker returned a month later and threatened to kill her. Records withheld from Talley’s trial attorneys revealed that Victim 3 had a blood alcohol concentration of .34 around the time of the incident.

Case status: Talley exonerated.

June 24, 1981

Victim 4 (White female), a LaGrange College student, was in the basement of a church where she worked 1.5 miles from campus and just blocks from Victim 3’s home when a Black male grabbed her from behind, threatened her, choked her, dragged her into an adjoining room, punched her in the mouth and sexually assaulted her. Victim 4 never saw the attacker, but described him as having a “Negro smell” with medium build and “good diction.” The mother of Victim 4 also reported that a male made a threatening phone call to their house the next day and stated she could tell the caller was Black by his voice. Male DNA from this victim’s rape kit was eventually tested in 2009, which excluded Talley as the perpetrator and confirmed his innocence in this case.

Case status: Talley exonerated (Conviction overturned in 2013).

June 30, 1981

Victim 5 (Black female) was working at a medical center near campus when a Black male grabbed her neck from behind and dragged her into an adjacent room. The attacker turned off the lights and ordered her to remove her pants. Victim 5 reported that he stopped and fled before sexually assaulting her once he realized she was menstruating.

Case status: Conviction intact; Under review for potential exoneration.

July 21, 1981

On this day, Victim 6 (Asian female) reported to the LaGrange Police Department (LGPD) that a Black male had knocked on her door in April, offering her money. She reported that when she tried to close the door, he took her by the arm and tried to enter her home.  She reported that he then saw her child and left without further incident.  Victim 6 reported the April incident to police on July 21st after seeing the man again, and identified the man as Terry Talley. 

Talley was arrested on July 21 and freely admitted to being present at Victim 6’s house and offering her money for sex several months earlier. Talley was initially charged by police with simple battery, but in the context of the serial rape allegations, prosecutors charged Talley with aggravated assault with intent to rape for this incident, and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Case status: Conviction intact; Under review for overcharging / excessive sentence.

November 9, 1981

First trial, involving the April 19, 1981 incident. Terry was convicted and sentenced to life.

November 10, 1981

Second trial, involving the June 24, 1981 incident. Terry was convicted and sentenced to a consecutive life sentence the following day. 

November 11, 1981

Terry pled guilty to the 3 remaining violent sexual assaults and the attempt to pay for sex. 

Wrongful Convictions

Under immense pressure from the community to solve the serial rape crimes, authorities quickly zeroed in on Talley as the primary suspect after he told police he was indeed attempting to to pay Victim 6 for sex. In the wake of the serial rape cases, neighbors had commented to police canvassing area that they had seen a Black man looking for yard work, and Talley also told police he routinely knocked on doors looking for yard work. That was all the evidence police needed. 

Despite nothing actually tying Talley to any of the violent crime scenes, lead investigators from the LGPD and the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) put him in photographic and in-person lineups. Victims and neighbors were brought in one by one, within minutes of each other, to identify Talley –even though nearly all of them previously had identified other suspects. The witnesses identified him with varying levels of confidence, some by his physical appearance, some by his voice, and others simply by a process of elimination. Records documenting the procedures were inconsistent and contradictory. For example, a handwritten note says one victim “thinks” that Talley was the man she saw in the neighborhood around the time of one of the crimes, but she was “not positive,” noting that “if any of them [in the lineup] were him, it was [Talley].” However, the police report documenting this attempted identification, omits that she was tentative and instead says she “identified Talley.”

The State then promptly arrested and charged Talley in all five serial rape cases. While Talley quickly admitted he knocked on Victim 6’s door and offered her money for sex, he adamantly denied involvement in the distinctly different and brutally violent attacks against Victims 1-5. He vowed to fight the cases and prove his innocence.