On February twenty seventh, nineteen eighty two, a string of five armed robberies occurred in Gary, Indiana, leaving one man shot dead in front of his wife and three young daughters. All the victims described the assailant as a black man around five to six with a kangle hat, red bandana, black leather jacket, and some sort of scarring on his face.
Instead of compiling a photo array of men fitting that description, investigators included the photo of Timmy Donald, a man who was six feet tall with no facial scarring, and, according to at least one victim, was the suggested choice of investigators. In fact, a search warrant had already been obtained for Timmy's home before he had been misidentified. Three of the robbery victims, including one former Gary police officer, were separately shown the photo array and did not identify Timmy, but
the other two view the array together. A mixture of police and peer pressure produced two misidentifications during the live lineup. According to one victim, when she said that Timmy was bigger than the armed robber, she was assured that they had the right guy, even though it was proven that Timmy was at work at the exact time that the victim had spotted the actual attacker on the street and tried to report it. Tunnel vision had already set in
and that report was hidden from the defense. Despite no physical or forensic evidence, as well as a solid alibi and the protests of all the other victims, the misidentifications were enough to send Timmy Donald away for a sixty year sentence. This is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction.
Today's case is pretty much mind blowing. It was an insane crimes fore but how they ended up convicting a man named tim Donald and sending him to sixty years to life in prison on some of the shakiest eyewitness testimony I've ever heard, ignoring and covering up exculpatory evidence. And that's just the beginning. We're talking about an Indiana case that occurred in the early nineties in a time when police corruption. It would be comical if it wasn't
so sinister. And we have the man himself here today with us, So without further ado, Tim Donald, welcome to wrong for conviction.
Thank you for having me.
And you know I always say I'm sorry you're here because of the reason why you're here, but I'm very grateful and honored to have you here on the show with us, and of course with you today. Is my friend and someone who a lot of us call a hero in this movement. She's a professor of criminal justice who serves as the executive director of the Center for Justice and Post Exoneration Assistance at Purdue University Northwest. Doctor Nikki Jackson. Welcome to Rawfel Conviction.
Thanks Jason, Thanks for having.
Me so Tim. It's been thirty years since this happened, but it must seem like yesterday in some ways to you. Let's go back in time too, before this insanity, when you were just a young man with hopes and dreams like anybody else. What was your life like growing up in Indiana back in the in the seventies, eighties and early nineties.
I had four sisters, mother, step dad, doing grade school, middle school, and high school. I enjoyed playing sports, baseball, basketball, and just hanging around my family in France.
Were you a good player? Good athlete?
Pretty good?
I hear the underneath that tone. It sounds like he was probably really good some humility.
I had dreams of playing center field for the Chicago cust so.
You were good. Yeah, let's not listen. I had dreams of being a pro ball player.
I often knew that probably every young man he dreams.
Yeah, mind, there was no connection between those dreams and reality. So you grew up. And did you have any run ins with the law before this insane series of events.
Yeah.
In nineteen eighty nine, we wanted to bar my friend's uncle Carr to go to the beach, and I know the neck of the stadium column was missing. That's usually associated with the car being stolen. So I askedly his uncle what was going on with that. He said he said he lost the key and he was in the process of getting that a NIX fixed. So we got stopped by the police and he noticed the NISS and automatically he thought the car was stolen, so we was arrested.
His uncle eventually came to the police station, run the proper paperwork showing ownership of the car, and I was released and was not.
Charged with a crime.
Good thing he had that.
And I got arrested for the legend car.
I was fingerprinted and that's how my pictures got in the Gary police.
Depart And I think that's an important point. To touch on, because I think it's why a lot of young men like yourselves, who come from varias when over policing is occurring, end up in the system through no fault of your own in this case. So this crime, this is a crazy scenario I'm talking about. On February twenty seventh, nineteen ninety two, in Glen Park, which was a neighborhood in Gary, Indiana, there.
Were five armed robberies, all within one hour of each other, and the fourth robbery resulted in the death.
A man named Bernard Jim Menez was arriving home with his wife, Kimberly Bolinsky, and their three little daughters. A man had a handgut and he grabbed the little girl with the biggest one, the seven year old, and demanded money, and Miss Belinsky said that her husband put the cash from his wallet, which was less than twenty dollars on the ground, told the robber to go into the house
and take whatever he wanted. The robber picked up the money, but was angry what he saw that was so little of it, threw it down on the ground, yelled out, you don't value your family, and then he pointed his gun at the one year old's face. This is a sick, sick guy. Then the victim, mister Jimenez, through a small wooden picnic table at the assailant. There was a struggle, and the struggle ended with the robber fatally shooting this young father and fleeing.
Five minutes after mister Hemenez was murdered. The perpetrator then gets to another victim, robs her and her daughter. And she is a former Gary police officer. And I think that's really important as well.
Right, And since this is a case of myth identification, Curiously, this former Gary police officer never identified you, and one would think that her judgment might hold more weight with the local police. I mean, she's a cop after all, but it did not. And all of the robbery victims, as well as mister Jimenez's wife, Kimberly Belinski, described as sale in a similar way. Right blackmail about five six, black leather jacket, a kgo hat with a red bandana,
really sleepy eyes. And they all said that he had really bad skin, like maybe acne scarring or something like that. So let's go to the first most obvious thing, Tim how tall are you?
I'm six feet So.
The victims described the perpetrator, who was five six or five seven exactly. I mean, did you suddenly grow after you went to prison? Were you maybe five six five seven? Back then?
I musta grew? You hit an excellent makeup artist.
Yeah, you didn't have anything wrong with your skin either, as all the victims had described the assailant. Right, it's a mystery as to how you could have even been considered a potential suspect. What did your skin like magically heal itself overnight or magically get terrible over it? I mean, it's also it's monstrously ridiculous, yet inexplicably the investigation still was sent in your direction. We still don't know. Maybe
we'll never know what the motivation was. But before they had even done this sort of shady identification procedure, Timmy was arrested on some kind of traffic violation. Just four days after this crime.
I was arrested more a second.
They came to his home with this arrest warrant for failure to sign.
Yeah that sounds fishy, but at this point you're probably still just thinking, Okay, I'll go take care of this and be on my way.
I knew someone was wrong when they came to the house. They like they was picking up the president for the White House, with all the cars and things of this nature. So I knew it was something more than a traffic I didn't know it was to this degree.
Have you heard about this crime spree? I mean, was it no one in the area.
I think my sister had read about it in a news type.
So after he was taken to the police station under this warrant for these failure to appear in court, he was placed in a photo lineup. So mister Donald's picture was put in a six pack in that photo lineup based on that nineteen eighty nine arrest. Okay, so it was tossed in.
Now, three of the victims, you'd line up separately, but that wasn't the case with these other two, Kimerly Bleinski and Rhonda Williams.
From my understanding, these two women were placed in the same room and identified mister Donald, whereas all the other victims did not identify him. They all had said, this is not the man. What happened was, these two women are in this room. It's one's a Caucasian, one's African American. The Caucasian female says, I'm not sure. At some point in the game, she changes her story and says, yes, it's him, Yes, it's him later and we can talk about this because I think this is so important to
Timmy's case. Is the recantation made by Ronda Williams. When Ronda says she was basically coerced to pick mister Donald out of that photo lineup, Kimberley Bolinsky says, no, we got the right guy.
So you have this element of cross racial identification, which study after study has proven to be actually less accurate than guessing. And yes, you heard that right, it's less accurate than guessing, especially in cases where someone witnesses a violent crime up close. So at first Kimberly was not sure. Then she eventually comes around to that idea, and all the other people in the room lean on Ronda.
And what's really important to note is that all of the victims, every victim had reported that the assailant had really bad skin, had a different build than mister Donald, had the man they described could not have been mister Donald. Yet in a photo lineup, these two women together picked out mister Donald. After the victims were shown the photo lineup. Then there was a physical lineup.
The lineup was like, it was suggestive. Everybody supposed to resemble one another. Then none of the gas resemble me. I was like the taller, the tallest one in the lineup.
And the same two victims identified mister Donald.
Right. Well, we know that photo lineups can be done in a very suggestive manner, and they often are. And then once the victim or even eyewitness sees that photo in the photo lineup and identifies it, now their mind starts to lock in on that image. And then they go to the live lineup, and you have a person who doesn't resemble the actual perpetrator, but resembles the person that they picked out when they were being suggestively shown
the photos in the six pack. And of course you go, oh, that's yeah, because you're already that's the way our mind works.
The next day they went and conducted a search of his home. The kingle hat and a red bandana were never discovered.
None of the victims, but longest wasn't found there my home either.
They found absolutely no evidence that linked mister Donald to any of these robberies or the murder of mister Hemenez.
The thing that struck me is they had the affidavit for a search want signed by the judge an hour before the lineup was even conducted. But you need probable calls to get the search.
WM right, and they didn't have that.
They made their minds up and they were going to make the evidence fit the narrative that they wanted instead of looking at the evidence and then analyzing it for what it was.
It's very shocking to even know that this even got to trial. I mean, there was zero evidence, zero.
Yet you were charged with first degree murder and two counts of armed robbery. The trial took place in Lake County Circuit Court in June of ninety two. Now, your older sister, Sheila and her partner Dan Hopkins, both testified during the evening of the crimes, you were car shopping with them in a place called Barrelville and Crown Point, Indiana, And the car salesmen testified. Right, so someone could say, well the relatives, people say whatever they say about that.
But the car salesman testified that the three of you were at their dealerships at the same time of day as the crimes occurred. But for some reason, the dealership employees didn't verify that they were on the exact same day as the crime. I don't understand what was that all about.
They keep being said.
But my sister Brown proved a business card that was dated and had car prices on it the same day that these crimes was committed, So I don't know what it was put out there, like when we visited the car dealership it went on the same day, or the.
Crimes and the cameras in the auto dealership the footage had been erased, So that's one of the issues.
My trail attorney didn't get there in time and erased tights.
And since you didn't have the money to bond out, you were not able to develop the alibi evidence that your lawyer didn't seem to have the time or inclination. Let's call it what it is to develop now. Any absence of physical or forensic evidence was explained away just as we were. Abi evidence was as well, and even though three of the five victims never identified you, they still had Kimberly Bolinski adamantly supporting her id while Ronda
Williams was convinced to go through with her as at trial. Meanwhile, any of Ronda's reservations at the live lineup and the fact that she had reported seeing the attacker proven to not be you in the street. In the days following your robberies, all that critical information was hidden from your defense team, and so the jury found you guilty and you were sentenced to sixty years.
After the verdict was ready, I've just looked back towards my family because they were sitting directly in back of me, and one of my sisters was frenant at the time.
She just collapsed. Yes, I already know that.
I had that found guilty, and my man, my main concern was the safety and welfare my sister at the time.
The Pacers Foundation is a proud supporter of this episode of Rawfuel Conviction and of the Last Mile organization, which provides business and tech training to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently re enter the workforce. The Pacers Foundation is committed to improving the lives of Hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations that are dedicated primarily to helping young people and students.
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The first time I went to yard and I looked at that forty foot wall and you can't see nothing. Only thing that you could see at the sky, And that's what really stuck in my head. Of course, in the prison, you experienced different type of emotions. You know, you go through about a depression. I remember one time I was having a hard time sleeping and I remember this show I was watching. I forgot the name on
the show. It was a guy on death row in textas he wrote a letter to an innocent project and eventually they helped him get out of death row and release from prison. And at that moment, I just sat down there and I wrote a summary of my case. I got a directory of all the innocent projects in the United States, and I got a copy of the letter. I just sent them out to all the innocent projects.
Amazingly, things started to turn around. It was not that long after you went to prison, right that it was discovered that not long after the crime and before you had been arrested, one of the victims, a victim named Williams, had called the police and reported that she saw the man who robbed her on the street.
So Williams had been living with the fact that she felt like she had picked out the wrong man, and we now know that she had called the police, I believe three days after she had been robbed. She said, I see the man. I think this is him who actually robbed me. So the police went to her home, they spoke with her, and then they went to mister
Donald's workplace. They checked out his time card, they spoke to his supervisor, and they found that there was no way that mister Donald could have been the man in front of her home when he was at work. In fact, he had lunch with his supervisor at the time that she had phoned the police.
So Ronda Williams, prior to your formal charges, had spotted the actual assailant on the street and reported it, and the police looked into it, and it turned out that the person that she saw could not have been you because you had been at work provably so at the time that she had seen the attacker. I'm just pausing for a second for emphasis. That seems like it should have mattered to the police.
That's right, and yet nobody knows about this. The detectives did not inform anybody. This didn't come out till after he'd been incarcerated for many, many years.
That was just the first time that they would tell evidence on mar case.
If the attorney had had this information, this case would have pretty much been a done deal.
That information, as I understand it, became the basis for a post conviction motion to vacate Tim's conviction. But the motion, as well as the subsequent appeals were denied.
They said the information he had married. But it was a town and that's why that got ton. During that time, I was transitioning to another attorney, my trial attorney. He was running for the mayor Gary, So at this time I didn't have an attorney, and I guess the town framed it. It supposed to have been found it had overlapped.
I mean, the technicalities make me crazy. I think most people would agree that justice is more important than the technical details and furthermore, finality, which seems to be the
opposite of the way our system functions. So now we fast forward to two thousand and six, when the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University's Middill School of Journalism and later the Chicago Innocence Center began reinvestigating your case, and they found evidence that showed that an eighteen year old street gang member, a guy named Lavelle Thompson who had facial acne and was about the right hype. He had been murdered shortly after the robberies and the murder of
mister Jimenez. Now in two thousand and nine, so another three years go by. Williams provided as Warren statement saying that at the time she viewed the photographic lineup, she was with Bolinski. It so, Williams said, she pointed to your photo and Olinsky began to weep. However, a police officer noted a report that Bolinsky was not completely sure
of her identification. Williams also said in the statement that when she viewed the live lineup, she told the detective that Timmy, that you were bigger and taller than the robber, right, just like we kee been saying this whole time, and as you had been saying probably the whole time. However, the detective assured her that you were in fact the guy, and that you had been arrested across the street from
Williams's home. Now, she said, the detective quote unquote, convinced me that I had picked the right guy, end quote. Williams also said she never told prosecutors about her reservations or the detectives successfully coercing her, and she said that she remained convinced that the man that she saw shortly after the robbery was the gunman who robbed her, which again would have mean that it could not possibly have
been you. And everybody knew that because they knew that you had been at work at that time, that was beyond any doubt. But she testified to her doubts and to the police detective's effort to persuade her during a sworn deposition that she gave in twenty thirteen as part of the post conviction proceeding to vacate your conviction. So now things are really gathering momentum.
About this time.
That's when the notes was discovered that Rada and our trial prosecutor had a meeting. This was before trial lay back in ninety two. Landa had told the dean prosecutor that was prosecuting my case that she wont one hundred percent certain that I was the individual. She said I was taller, she said my shoulders was wider, and that she was sure he knew about these notes and he got her own stand knowing that she testified to something
that she ain't sure about. So these noes stay hidden in this prosecutor file for over twenty years before they were discovered. That's the second Brady violation.
I don't have any words for that, right, Nikki, What can you say about this type of behavior? What can you say?
Well, it's unacceptable, and I think people need to be held accountable. If prosecutors and or police didn't do what they should be doing, they should be held accountable. I mean, at the end of the day, these folks are responsible for stealing this man's life. And if you and I stole somebody's life, we would be held accountable.
It's hard to think of another profession where you have no accountability.
Right, Because they have this immunity, they're able to get away with these things. But I think once we start holding criminal justice actors responsible, we will start to see change for the better.
I thank god that he didn't put the notes through.
Yeah, that's a miracle right there. And that brings us to twenty and sixteen, twenty four years and we end up on January twenty fifth, twenty sixteen, in the Lake County Circuit Court, right where the judge vacated your convictions and granted a new trial. Now, the judge said that the prosecution contended that the same man had committed both crimes and had argued that the identifications were positive and
without any reservations. So the judge ruled that the prosecution's failure to disclose Miss Williams's reservations about her identification, as well as the detective's effort to persuade her successfully as it turned out, to identify you, rendered your trial unconstitutional, constitutionally unfair, as he called it, and so on January twenty seven, two days later, the Lake County State's attorney dismissed the charges and you were released. You went in
as a twenty three year old kid. Really, let's say say you're more the kid at twenty three than the man. Now you're a forty seven year old man. And so we talked about that terrible moment when you were convicted of crime. He had nothing to do with what about this moment.
I want to take you back a little bit, Jason. Like a week prior to me finding out that the charges was getting distisced, my mother had came to visit me, and she told me it was like a three hundred.
And sixty dollars.
I can't even remember the exact number power ball, and she said she was gonna play it. So the following Monday, I losely called my mother and my auntie, and my mother told me we won. So I'm thinking, well, she said we won, I'm thinking she's talking about the power ball that I was elated. Here the truth family came out.
What about the power ball? They didn't didn't win?
That was I didn't win the power Ball. She probably was more excited for this wing.
Ye, I guarantee you she would have gave that powerball ticket winning ticket to get her son on question about it.
So, and keep in mind, Jason that while he had been exonerated in January of twenty sixteen, we all know he's innocent. The prosecutor has even stated that he is innocent. Listen, there is no statue of limitations for homicide, so the state at any time can still come back and bring charges against mister Donald. And I don't think people really
understand that how this haunts mister Donald today tomorrow. I mean this, you know, they can come back even with no evidence, nothing here in Indiana, and that's really problematic.
Yeah, I mean, they can come back everywhere that I know of, Yeah, and they can retry you. Normally they won't, but sometimes they try to extract the plea just in order for you to avoid the retrial. And after everything you'd already been through, you know, who knows how somebody's going to react.
To that, they offer me a plea Bog two.
At thirteen, the prosecutor had reached out to his attorney. They had offered him an Alfred plea to get out, and he refused because, Timmy, what you shared with me was that you would not agree to something that you did not do, and that they called your mama a liar, And for those reasons, he chose not to accept that Alfred plea, or he would have been out of prison in twenty thirteen.
They called my sister, my brother in law, a lawyer. And I just couldn't accept taking a plea walk and I know I didn't have nothing to do with it.
So the prosecutor clearly knew in advance, three years earlier that they didn't have anything right. They knew they knew. In fact, I called the prosecutor after I met mister Donald, and I said, Hey, is this guy really innocent? And he said, he's one hundred percent innocent. We locked up the wrong guy. I mean, I will never forget that phone call.
Yeah, but what does it say as well about this system and the people in it that they come to you. I'm ninety nine percent sure they knew you were innocent, and they're trying to screw you again by getting you to sign away, literally signing your life away in order to go home.
I haven't figured out how people sleep at night, Jason. I'm not going to lie to you. I really don't know how people can sleep at night knowing that an innocent person is sitting in prison and they have the power and the authority to help release that individual.
It's unbelievable, And it said they go the exact opposite way and try to make the situation worse, try to double down, because it's not enough that we kept this innocent man in prison for half of his life. Right now, we're going to make sure that he can't ever get justice by making him side a piece of paper that we know is false. I mean, I don't know how
they sleep at night either. I think you're a great example for everyone of somebody who's been to hell and back and come out, you know, wanted to make a difference, making a difference in the lives of others, not sitting around. I mean, listen, if you were in the bar, drunk in the corner every day all day, nobody could judge you because of what you went through. But instead you're working hard with doctor Jackson, educating people, helping other axoneries, doing all kinds of incredible stuff.
I think it's important to know what happened with Timmy's life like after like literally when he got out.
So I leave in prison, coming back into the society, to being dropping the foreign country and you don't know the language and all the customers. I want to stay with my sister, the same sister that I was with a fiance is they now married.
They offered me a.
Rome great, the same sister and fiance that we're out. Oh by witnesses.
Yes, they offered me a place to stay, and I gladly accept it.
When I saw this picture of mister Donald in a newspaper, I knew I had to meet him. My background is domestic violence, but when I met mister Donald, what I observed was another victim, but a victim of a system. And when he got out of prison. You know, there were a lot of struggles and challenges, right, dental health issues, medical health, economic strife. I mean, he didn't have a job, a driver's license, a resume. You know, how do you craft a resume when there's twenty four years missing? So
think about how hard that is. And so when we met and he shared those struggles, there was no question that things needed to change for exigneries here in Indiana.
Well, you being released people that actually committed a crime. They had more resources than people that's been wrongly convicted.
And I don't got a problem with that.
They needs you're so high, but they still a commo day awful convicted individual.
Also, through Timmy, I have learned so much about the flaws and the system and all of the re entry struggles. So I said to Timmy, we've got to fix it. We got to fix it. We've got to address these issues. And that's what we've been doing. One of the first things that I promised Timmy was that we would get a compensation statue in the state of Indiana. I fought very hard, and two years later we have a compensation statute,
which is still a problem. Our exonarees have to choose between litigation or compensation the way it currently stands, and that's problematic because again we're revictimizing them. We're saying you can't pursue litigation if you want to receive the compensation. Again, we're holding them hostage.
So you and I cross paths during that fight to get the compensation bill passed. And like you may, this bill has its problems, but it's still a first victory in the longer battle for a just system. And you and I go into depth on how you got this done in our interview on my other podcast, Righteous Convictions, where I encourage our listeners please go check this out. Well, we'll have it linked in the bio to make it
easy for you. Now, you sat on two prison advisory boards and you were able to use that position knowing a number of lawmakers, and you were able to rally support for this bill, as flawed as it is. So that is something you continue to work on from an organization that you founded in Timmy's name, which is beautiful actually back in twenty twenty, the Willie T. Donald Xoneration Advisory Coalition. So what have you guys been up to?
And you know, we need some help for the folks here in Indiana. In terms of post exoneration assistance, we have an amazing board of directors. We are very fortunate that we've got the Center for Justice and Post Exoneration Assistants established at the University. Purdue Northwest has been incredible supporter. They have helped fund this, as has the Signmon family. So we are looking at policy issues, you know, policy reform, post exoneration needs of x hoonneries, and also obviously claims
of innocence. Mister Donald is paying it forward and there's no better eyes, no better lens to look at a wrongful conviction than an x hoonnery. We have a long list of things that we are attempting to do. As you know, on average, it takes about nine years to get somebody exonerated. I'm not a lawyer, so I am hoping to raise funds to get more money so we can hire an attorney or have attorney's work pro bono on the cases that mister Donald and the students are
now reviewing. So some really great things have happened as a result of actually of our friendship, of our meeting, you know, some incredible things have happened. So If anybody is interested in learning more about the work that the Center for Justice and Post Exoneration Assistance is doing, they
can email me at CJPA at PNW dot edu. And if there's anybody who's interested in providing donorship sponsorships, we would be very excited to talk to you, you know, help you better understand what we're doing and why this is so important to all citizens of the state of Indiana and actually nationwide.
We're going to have all of that linked in the bio, in addition to a GoFundMe for Timmy. And now we're going to go to my favorite part of the show, which of course is called closing Arguments. And closing Arguments is, of course the part of the show where I kick back in my chair. Thank both of you, of course profusely for being here. Turn my microphone off, leave my headphones on, and just listen to anything else you'll want to say.
Thank you so much for having me here today. I really do hope that the viewers learned something regarding wrongful convictions, particularly in terms of mistaken witness identification, and that everybody understands that this could happen to you. And one of the things that I end everything with when I'm talking about wrongful convictions is if you were ever placed in police custody, interrogation, whatever, make sure you ask for an attorney.
I think that is one of the biggest mistakes that people make, and it makes sense when you're innocent, you have nothing to hide, so you think you don't need an attorney. And unfortunately we know thousands of people have been wrongly convicted and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Right, So again, thank you for having me. And I also want to say thank you to mister Donald for allowing me to enter into his world. So thank you Timmy for that.
Thank you. Well wonthful, good vicious should never happen.
And it's my hope that thing my journey since I've been out that I think came across the a lot of young people that's entering the law professsion let it be an attorney, prosecutor, and some of them going into
police work. And it's my host that learning about my case in other people cases about wrong conviction is my hope that once they entered in today land of work, that the old guard adventurally a leave in the new wave of come in and they'll probably sign up write a light on this troubling issue.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wardis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason flam Ravel. Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one