Lack of witness testimony for the defense
Police should have interviewed Trista Todd, Jeremy’s girlfriend at the time, who Jeremy stated he was with the night Wright was killed. Investigators should have also contacted the Spy Club, where Jeremy says he and Trista went that night, to identify witnesses who might have remembered seeing Jeremy there. DPD also should have interviewed Octavia Sims, the woman whom Jeremy was with when he was arrested. It seems that the police systematically left out all the witnesses who could have supported Jeremy’s alibi.
Overzealous Prosecutor with Unreliable Jailhouse Witnesses
During the trial, the state’s prosecutor, Vanita Budhrani-White, relied upon the testimonials of three jailhouse informants to obtain a conviction against Jeremy. According to the Innocence Project, jailhouse informant testimony is a leading contributing factor of wrongful convictions, playing a role in nearly one in five of the over 350 cases of DNA-based exoneration across the nation. Jailhouse informants are people in prison or facing charges who are incentivized to testify against a defendant in exchange for a benefit, which can include receiving leniency in their own case. Several states have recently taken steps to tighten regulations on jailhouse informants.
One witness in Jeremy’s case, Reginald Love (Jeremy’s half-brother), was a known crack cocaine addict who made contradictory statements to authorities and said that he smoked crack cocaine the night of the murder. Detective Beck of the DPD admitted that he wrote out Love’s witness report for him because Love was “too high” to do it himself. (The law now requires officers to videotape such witness interviews.) Additionally, drug paraphernalia from Reginald Love’s hotel room at the Delux Inn was seized however, Love was never charged with possession, which raises additional questions about the reliability of his testimony.
Another witness named Susan Johnson was subsequently revealed to have been using a pseudonym. Johnson’s legal name was actually Linda Lee Rutledge, and she was wanted in the state of Georgia and also had a long rap sheet in Texas. Rutledge was extradited back to Georgia, but then just weeks before Jeremy's trial, on a motion filed by Jeremy’s prosecutor, Vanita Budhrani-White, Rutledge was bench-warranted back to Dallas County. The prosecutor that was previously assigned to Rutledge’s two pending felony drug charges was replaced with Budhrani-White.
Days later, Vanita Budhrani-White presented Rutledge at Jeremy’s trial under her alias name, Susan Johnson. Not one time did the state make any attempt to inform Jeremy's defense counsel of Rutledge’s true identity. Jeremy’s grassroots justice team was only able to discover this information because of the trail of paperwork Budhrani-White left behind.
Although Johnson/Rutledge testified at Jeremy’s trial that she did not receive a deal from the prosecutor, court records show that a week after the conclusion of Jeremy’s trial, one of Rutledge’s felony drug charges was dismissed. She received the minimum sentence for violating her probation.
Subpar Defense Representation
Jeremy met with his defense attorney, Michael Thomas, for the first time the day his trial began. Given what we know about the trial, it seems that Thomas did the bare minimum required of him. He couldn’t even be bothered with finding witnesses to testify at trial in support of Jeremy’s alibi. It is important to note that Michael Thomas was suspended from practicing law for two years in 2002, disciplined by the Supreme Court of Texas in 2006, and is no longer allowed to practice law in the state of Texas.