Delbert Tibbs

Early life and trial

Tibbs was born June 19, 1939, in Shelby, Mississippi; moving to Chicago, Illinois at age 12. He attended the Chicago Theological Seminary from 1970 to 1972.

In 1974, he was hitchhiking in Florida when he was implicated in a crime for which he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death.

That year, a 27-year-old male and a 17-year-old female were violently attacked near Fort Myers, Florida. The man was murdered and the young woman raped. She reported that they had been picked up while hitchhiking by a black man who shot her boyfriend dead and then beat and raped her, leaving her unconscious by the side of the road.

Tibbs was about 220 miles north of the crime scene when he was stopped by police and questioned about the crime. The police took his picture, but as he did not fit the victim's description of the perpetrator, they did not arrest him. They sent the photograph to Fort Myers, where the victim identified him as the attacker. A judge issued a warrant for Tibbs' arrest. He was picked up in Mississippi two weeks later and sent to Florida.

Though Tibbs had an alibi, he was indicted for the crimes. During the trial, the prosecution supplemented the victim's identification with testimony from a jailhouse informant, who claimed Tibbs had confessed to the crime. The all-white jury convicted Tibbs of murder and rape, and he was sentenced to death.

Post-trial and appeal

After the trial, the informant recanted his testimony, saying he had fabricated his account hoping for leniency in his own rape case. On appeal, the Florida Supreme Court remanded the case and reversed the decision, on the grounds that there was "considerable doubt that Delbert Tibbs is the man who committed the crimes." The court ordered a retrial. Tibbs was released in January 1977. In 1982, the Lee County State Attorney dismissed all charges, ending the chance of a retrial.

Life since freedom

Since that time Tibbs worked as an anti-death penalty activist, also seeking changes in the criminal justice system and use of eyewitness identifications. Numerous studies have shown these to be unreliable and highly flawed.

Tibbs was one of six persons featured in the play The Exonerated (2002), based on accounts from death row inmates who were exonerated. (See Legacy, below.) The authors said that he was one of the inmates who showed belief in something larger to sustain him. He had said to them, "I realized if I internalized all the pain, and all the anger, and all the hurt, I'd be dead already."

He was among the audience when Governor George Ryan of Illinois and other politicians watched a production of the play. In 2003 Ryan commuted the death sentences of 167 inmates on death row to life imprisonment before leaving office. Later Tibbs was with a group talking to Governor Quinn about injustices in the penal system.

Tibbs began writing poetry and is the author of Selected Poems and Other Words/Works (2007), edited by O'Modele Jeanette Rouselle. It was published in New York by the Manifestation-Glow Press. His poetry also appears in the chapbook anthology Beccaria, edited by poet Aja Beech and published in 2011.

Legacy

In November 1976 Pete Seeger wrote and recorded the anti-death penalty song "Delbert Tibbs".

Tibbs is one of six people whose lives were dramatized in the acclaimed play The Exonerated, written by Eric Jensen and Jessica Blank and premiered in 2002 Off-Broadway in New York City. The playwrights recount how each individual was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, in addition to exploring their exoneration after varying years of imprisonment.

The Exonerated was adapted as a film by the same name, which first aired on the CourtTV cable television station on January 27, 2005. Tibbs is portrayed by Delroy Lindo. At the end the film fades from the actor to Tibbs, who talks about his experience and his hopes.

On February 14, 2011, Tibbs, along with fellow exonerees and anti-death penalty activists, spoke with Illinois Governor Pat Quinn about repealing the death penalty in their state. A month later, on March 14, 2011, the death penalty was repealed in Illinois.