The author visiting Bobby Harper at the Stiles Unit of the so-called Texas Dept. of Justice in Beaumont last November. Photo courtesy of Ruah Ministries.

In the late hours of Oct. 8, 1998, Mohammad Yunus, a convenience store clerk, was killed in a robbery at a Conoco station on IH 35. The only eyewitness was a stocker mopping the floor at the back of the store, who after seeing a man come in with a stocking cap over his face, dropped to the floor and tried to hide, terrified of the events as they unfolded. The only real evidence was a grainy surveillance video of a Black man with a face mask pointing a gun at the frightened clerk, yelling at him to give him the money – and then firing. Within a matter of hours, San Marcos police had their suspect identified and arrested, even without fingerprints, eyewitnesses, or any other kind of identifying evidence. The suspect, Bobby Joe Harper, would confess that same night. 

In criminal matters, the confession has been called the king of evidence – as good as a conviction. And so it seems incredulous that innocent people would incriminate themselves by confessing to something they didn’t actually do. But that was Bobby Harper. He had just turned 18 a few weeks earlier and was a high school dropout. Why? Like so many kids who have bad experiences in school, Bobby had an undiagnosed learning disability. He was teased and taunted and wanted to be anywhere but school. Away from school, he would fall under the influence of a man a few years older than him who encouraged him to steal packages of cigarettes, bicycles, and even speakers out of a Jeep.

The night that he was arrested, he was with his girlfriend and a nephew when he heard banging on the door – the police. Bobby knew there was a warrant out for him (for truancy) and he had just smoked some pot, so not wanting to be caught, he hid under the bed. The police called in a SWAT unit who found him. They took him to the jail and immediately started interrogating him at four in the morning. He initially said he didn’t do it, but with pressure from the detectives, he changed his mind.

More than 300 people, after spending months, years, even decades in U.S. prisons, have been exonerated of crimes they originally confessed to, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. That’s more than 10% of the 2,551 recorded exonerations since 1989. People from all walks of life falsely confess. For some, a confession is a way of showing a false bravado or even loyalty to another person who is guiding them down a dark and misleading path. But young people and those with mental disabilities are the most vulnerable, according to the Registry. In fact, 49% of false confessions exonerated by DNA evidence were from people under 21, according to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that uses DNA evidence to free the wrongly convicted. 

Moreover, people who are stressed, tired or traumatized while talking with police are more likely to give false confessions. Bobby had been up for more than 22 hours and was high. 

For his trial, Bobby – who of course could not afford the $50,000 it might take to hire a private lawyer – was appointed an attorney by the name of John Stickles to represent him. Just a few months before, Stickles had left the DA’s office and no one would say why. When Bobby first met him, Bobby pleaded with him that his confession was not right and he was innocent and Stickles needed to help him fix this. Stickle’s response? “Shut the F- up and let me do my job.” Bobby would go on to write to the judge, pleading for understanding on his false confession, but this of course went nowhere.

In most courts, a confession by itself will not result in a conviction. You need more – something that will corroborate the confession. The San Marcos Police Department found exactly that. They called Bobby’s mother, father, and aunt down to the police station and showed them the video of the masked man and asked if it was Bobby. Exactly how they phrased the questions no one knows, but the police would later produce signed documents that each stated that the gun-wielding Black man was their loved one. Pretty hard to believe that his close-knit family would do that, as members of a Black community that didn’t always have the best relations with law enforcement. These documents contained statements both Bobby’s father and aunt would deny making at the trial (Bobby’s mother was too ill to attend the trial, so her alleged statement went unchallenged). Stickles never addressed the incongruencies. 

Stickles also never investigated the false confession or called an expert witness in the matter, never did an investigation as to where Bobby was on the night of the murder (possibly at a party with 20 other people), never even asked how the cops were able to identify this masked man so quickly. In fact, when Bobby asked him to call his girlfriend as an alibi witness during his trial, Stickles went to the judge and told him on the record that he wouldn’t call his girlfriend as an alibi witness because her testimony could conflict with his mother’s and to allow that would be suborning perjury. This was an incorrect statement of Texas law, but it seemed that he was still wearing his prosecutor’s hat, rather than that of a zealous defense attorney. He never investigated the possibility that the family members’ statements could have been altered and in fact told the judge that he would not even call them to the stand to refute the documents that the police created because he “anticipate(d) that they would not be truthful.” 

Imagine if you knew you were innocent and that was your lawyer.

After the inevitable guilty verdict, Stickles told the family that if they pay him $15,000, he would win the case on appeal. Needless to say, he lost at the Third Court of Appeals and then forgot to file his second promised appeal with the Court of Criminal Appeals. Bobby got two consecutive life sentences, or today’s version of “life without parole.” He remains in the Texas prison system, where he has endured brutality and searing heat and has not been permitted to even test for a GED.

 Bobby’s family was bankrupted and damaged beyond repair. He was very close to his mother, whose health declined quickly after his arrest. He would never see her again, as she died after he left for prison. His siblings have cycled in and out of the criminal legal system, none having the funds to have proper counsel or treatment for their traumas. Bobby’s father desperately misses his son but has had a series of debilitating strokes and cannot even visit his son in prison. 

Several counties in Texas (and more than 100 across the nation) have created Conviction Integrity Units in their District Attorney’s offices to address wrongful convictions. Hays is not among those counties, but it could be. 

Afterword: This January, John Stickles’ license to practice law in the State of Texas was suspended for multiple cases that were strikingly similar to Bobby’s case 25 years ago, www.texasbar.com reported. The one death penalty case he handled was for a woman who also claimed her innocence. Her case was one of the fastest to go from conviction to execution. That is Stickles’ legacy – and it is not an anomaly. It plays out to this day with judges who appoint incompetent attorneys: no one is held accountable. A Conviction Integrity Unit would
help correct the wrongs of the past.

Author’s note: Information in this article came from court transcripts and interviews with Bobby Harper and Billy Joe Crayton.

BY SHANNON FITZPATRICK