James Dean Walker (1940–2023)

James Dean Walker was at the center of a convoluted legal case that raised concerns about the fairness of the American legal system.  

James Dean Walker was born on September 11, 1940, in Boise, Idaho. His parents, James Ralph Walker and Mary Elizabeth Demond, were divorced when he was very young, and he, like his older sister Ila, spent his youth going back and forth between his parents and foster homes.  

Walker attended school in Boise and all over the northwestern United States, often traveling with his father, who was a heavy-equipment operator. According to one report, Walker attended thirteen different schools over the course of one year.  

He enlisted in the U.S. Army at age nineteen and did stints at Fort Ord and Fort Dix before being stationed at a munitions depot near Bar-le-Duc in France, a small town about 140 miles northeast of Paris. Assigned to be the company commander’s driver, he was able to enjoy much of what Paris had to offer. When he was discharged in 1961, he got involved with a lawless crowd, and in the spring of 1963, while traveling cross country, the twenty-two-year-old Walker arrived in Arkansas. 

On April 16, 1963, Walker got into a bar fight east of North Little Rock (Pulaski County). He and his traveling companion Russell Freeman Kumpe of Sweet Home (Pulaski County), a native of the county who had a police record in four other states from Washington to Texas, left the bar and headed to the motel across the road, planning to check out before leaving town. But after they left the motel, they were stopped on the highway by police officers Gene Barrentine and Jerrell Vaughan. Both Kumpe and Walker were ordered out of the car, and as Walker raised his hands, one of which held a loaded pistol, shooting started. Walker was shot at five times, while officer Vaughan suffered a single fatal gunshot wound. Walker was charged with killing Vaughan, even though the pistol that Walker was holding at the time had not fired any shots. Adding to the uncertainty was the fact that another gun, which had been fired, was found next to the car. Prosecutors alleged that Walker had killed officer Vaughan with that one, although there was no proof of that. Prosecutors added that Walker had then been shot by Officer Barrentine, who had emptied his pistol, the last four shots going into the car.   

The jury deliberated for just twelve minutes before returning a guilty verdict, and Walker was sentenced to death. However, less than a week before his scheduled execution, the Arkansas Supreme Court granted a new trial based on the finding that the judge in the initial trial had allowed irrelevant and prejudicial evidence. Despite defense objections, and as well as evidence of bias on the part of the judge, the case was nevertheless assigned to the same judge, and Walker was again found guilty, although this time the sentence was life imprisonment.  

Following his second conviction, Walker was reported to have undergone a religious conversion, and while there were skeptics, following his professed change he became a model prisoner, while also becoming an active and impassioned advocate in an ultimately successful effort to build a prison chapel. While he still was regularly turned down for parole, his efforts did make him eligible for occasional furloughs, and in 1975, his record as a model prisoner notwithstanding, he simply did not return from a furlough, instead fleeing to Memphis, Tennessee, and then flying to California. He settled in the Lake Tahoe area, and under an assumed name he essentially resumed the life he had previously led, working as a bootblack, while the events of the last decade and a half were unknown to his clientele.  

In 1979, he was arrested for selling drugs. Police discovered Walker’s past record, and Arkansas demanded that he be extradited, a request he fought for two years before he was returned to the state. Ultimately, despite his contention that his life was threatened by a prison official, Art Lockhart, who recently had been appointed director of the Department of Corrections, coupled with concerns about the safety of the Arkansas prison system (the subject of recent national news reports), he was again incarcerated. At the same time, he also sued for a new trial, his attorneys (including Oscar Fendler) asserting that new evidence, including a diary belonging to Kumpe discovered since the original trials, as well as the discovery of evidence that had been withheld by prosecutors, lent support to the argument that Walker had not committed the murder.  

After another round of appeals and denials, the case was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. There, it drew the attention of Judge Myron H. Bright of Fargo, North Dakota, who turned it over to his clerk Trish Maher. After weeks of study, Maher told Bright she thought Walker had been framed. Bright was initially skeptical, but he, too, reviewed the whole record, ultimately determining that Walker, as Bright later wrote in his memoirs, “needed justice.” Bright would tell the Eighth Circuit’s presiding judge, Gerald W. Heaney of Duluth, Minnesota, that Walker was “probably innocent.” Bright’s concerns led to a rehearing before a panel of the Eighth Circuit, and in the spring of 1985, in an opinion written by Judge Bright, the court ruled that Walker was entitled to a new trial.  

Local prosecutor Christopher Piazza, after consulting with Vaughan’s widow, offered not to retry Walker if he agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter by vicarious liability, with the attendant sentence being time served. Walker, in the words of one journalist, “desperate to regain freedom” after more than twenty years, readily agreed to the deal.  

Upon his release in 1985, Walker headed to Lake Tahoe, but by 1993 he was back in Boise, where he established a life for himself as an unassuming but skilled bootblack, shining shoes in a number of places before landing in the Grove Hotel in downtown Boise. A 2013 feature story in the Idaho Statesman on Walker—whose customers over the years had included the governor, the mayor, and numerous legislators in Boise—did not mention his past, and countless of his prominent customers had no idea.  

Walker retired in 2017. He died in Boise on January 24, 2023.  

For additional information:
Bentley, George, and Lewis, Bill. “Policeman Slain in Pistol Battle after Club Fight.” Arkansas Gazette, April 17, 1963, pp. 1A, 2A. 

Bright, Myron H. Goodbye Mike, Hello Judge: My Journey for Justice. Fargo, ND: Institute for Regional Studies Press, 2014. 

Brower, Paul. “Bar[r]entine: ‘He Saved My Life.’” Arkansas Gazette, April 17, 1963, pp. 1A, 3A. 

Haberman, Dave. “The Case of James Dean Walker.” University of North Dakota School of Law, Vol. 2, Issue 1 (August 2008). https://law.und.edu/_files/docs/news/brightmagazinebrochure.pdf (accessed January 24, 2025).  

Hollar, John. “James Dean Walker, Convicted of Killing a Policeman 18…” UPI, May 9, 1981. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1981/05/09/James-Dean-Walker-convicted-of-killing-a-policeman-18/3215358228800/ (accessed January 24, 2025).  

Jim Walker Obituary. February 8–12, 2023. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/jim-walker-obituary?id=42607212 (accessed January 24, 2025).  

Kellams, Kyle. “Concluding the Saga of James Dean Walker.” KUAF, May 24, 2021. https://www.kuaf.com/ozarks-at-large-stories/2021-05-24/concluding-the-saga-of-james-dean-walker (accessed January 24, 2025).  

Masterson, Mike. “Stuff of Hollywood.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, February 18, 2023. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2023/feb/18/stuff-of-hollywood/ (accessed January 24, 2025).  

“Walker Faces Murder Trial.” Arkansas Gazette, April 18, 1963, pp. 1A, 2A. 

William H. Pruden III
Ravenscroft School 

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