Free Jeremy Busby

Jeremy was born in Dallas, Texas. When he was a adolescent, his mother (and sole guardian) was kidnapped and murdered. The unforeseen tragedy left him alone and helpless.

A young boy, with no father or family willing to take him in, Jeremy was thrust mercilessly into the foster care system. He became a victim of circumstance whose needs and general well-being went virtually ignored by a system stretched beyond its limits. The experience triggered a chain of negative events that subsequently led to what we firmly believe is a wrongful conviction.

While incarcerated Jeremy utilized education to transform his life. A graduate of Lee College and The University of Houston-Clear Lake. Jeremy was the first African-American staff writer for the Texas prison newspaper, The ECHO. Jeremy has volunteered for various human rights organization including, Amnesty International, ACLU, Texas Inmate Family Association, Texas-CURE, and the Prison Justice League.

Jeremy is a certified peer health educator and prison chaplaincy prisoner volunteer worship leader. His writings can be found at The Marshall Project, The Crime Report, Minutes Before Six.

Jeremy's highly anticipated self help book, "Free Yourself" is forthcoming in the last quarter of 2020.

In the fall of 1998, Andre Wright was murdered at the Delux Inn located at Royal Lane and Harry Hines Blvd in Northwest Dallas. Jeremy Busby, age 21, was charged with Wright’s murder - despite no physical evidence linking him to the crime - wrongly convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison. He is currently in the 23rd year of that prison sentence. Jeremy has maintained his innocence from Day One, and he and his grassroots team are currently fighting to secure a new trial.

We believe that Jeremy was falsely accused and wrongfully convicted of the murder of Andre Wright. Throughout Jeremy’s case we found numerous examples of shoddy police work evidence of an overzealous prosecutor utilizing unreliable jailhouse witness testimony and subpar defense representation. There was no physical evidence presented at trial to link Jeremy to Wright’s murder or even place him at the crime scene. In fact, Jeremy was not even arrested for the crime until four months later.

Shoddy Police Work

Case of mistaken identity
The Dallas Police Department identified Jeremy Busby as a suspect after a witness at the scene of the crime indicated that someone named “Twin” was the shooter. Jeremy was well known by the street name Twin. However, the DPD somehow missed the fact that there was another individual in the Dallas area who was also known by the street name Twin. Tracey Montgomery was the same age, size, and race as Jeremy. He hung out at the Delux Inn peddling drugs. Montgomery was in fact arrested for drug possession at the Delux Inn, and that police report clearly indicates that Tracey’s street name was “Twin.” Jeremy’s defense attorney was not aware of this potentially exculpatory information when they went to trial.

Lack of physical evidence
The murder weapon was never found, nor were any case shells found at the Delux Inn. The only evidence collected by DPD at the scene was a pair of glasses that did not belong to anyone involved in the case, along with three blood samples that did not match the victim. Witness accounts of the number of shots fired varied wildly from two to eight. As far as we know, no gunshot impacts were found on the premises. Additionally, evidence was collected from witness Reginald Love’s motel room, including significant drug paraphernalia and Love’s No. 22 Dallas Cowboys jersey. This jersey is no longer in the possession of the DPD, and it is unclear what happened to this piece of evidence, which Jeremy’s legal team had hoped to have tested for gunshot residue.

And the vehicle (a Nissan) owned by Jereem Mayberry that was used to transport the injured victim to a nearby Texaco station after the shooting, was shoddily examined by DPD. No blood stains were noted on the report, which is odd given eyewitness accounts of the victim getting out of this vehicle with his clothes soaked in blood. The autopsy confirmed that the victim’s clothes were bloodied. Furthermore, the police lifted two fingerprints from the Nissan, but were unable to match them. The DPD handling of the Nissan was particularly egregious: the vehicle was left outside in heavy rain with the sunroof open, resulting in standing water in the vehicle and potentially washing away valuable evidence.

Suggestive identification
The photo lineup that was utilized for eyewitness identification of the perpetrator in this case contained photographs of 5 men in street clothes, while Jeremy wears a jailhouse uniform in his photo. Additionally, Jeremy stands in front of a dark wall in the photo, while the other men stand in front of a white wall. The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure now prohibits these inconsistencies in photo lineups and requires that police departments take measures to ensure lineups “do not make the suspect noticeably stand out.”

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.