Wilbert Lee Evans

Wilbert Lee Evans (January 20, 1946 – October 17, 1990) was an American convict who was executed in Virginia's electric chair for the murder of 47-year-old Deputy Sheriff William Gene Truesdale in Alexandria, Virginia. Truesdale's murder occurred in 1981 during Evans's attempted escape from custody, as Evans was accused of other crimes in North Carolina, including a previous murder, and had been temporarily transported to Virginia to testify in another man's extradition hearing there.

Evans's execution was controversial due to several factors, including his documented good behavior and rehabilitation behind bars; trial errors and prosecutorial misconduct that human rights organizations, death penalty abolitionists, and Evans's attorneys argued should have resulted in a retrial or a reduced sentence; and the gruesome nature of Evans's death, as reporters who witnessed his execution in Virginia's electric chair described it as botched, and The Virginian-Pilot called Evans's execution "one of Virginia's worst." In 2023, NPR obtained and released documents and tape recordings of several executions in Virginia's electric chair, one of which was that of Evans; the tape recording of Evans's execution did not include mention of it being botched, although contemporaneous press reports and witness accounts did.

At the age of 18, Evans burglarized a gas station, seriously injuring one person. At another point in his youth, he took three members of a prison disciplinary committee as hostages and held them at knifepoint.

On August 31, 1978, Evans was accused of shooting and killing 37-year-old Alton J. Collins during an argument over $20 in a card game in Raleigh. Evans was charged with Collins' murder, but the case never went to trial. They had the choice of pursuing a sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty, and they recommended the death penalty. On June 1, 1981, Circuit Court Judge Wiley R. Wright formally sentenced Evans to death, stating that the jury served as "the conscience of the community" and that "their verdict had to be given great weight." Immediately after the trial, Evans's attorney stated he would file for a new trial; in the meantime, Judge Wright initially scheduled Evans to be executed on September 1, 1981.

Early appeals and prosecutorial misconduct Most of Evans's appeals were based on procedural errors and prosecutorial misconduct during his trial. In Virginia, to secure a death sentence against a defendant, it was necessary to prove that the defendant would pose an ongoing threat to society if they were to remain alive. The prosecutor in Evans's case, Alexandria Commonwealth Attorney John Kloch, argued in favor of a death sentence by showing the jury documentation that Evans had seven prior convictions. The documents motivated the jury to recommend the death penalty for Evans. In 1982, while Evans was on death row, his attorneys discovered that most of the convictions never occurred and that a computer error multiplied the number of convictions Evans had on his record, while other supposed convictions never made it to trial because their charges were dropped prior; further memos showed that Kloch was aware of the errors but used them to his advantage anyway. In a hearing on April 12, 1983, Kloch admitted that he knew the evidence he used against Evans was falsified. He and fellow death row inmate Willie Lloyd Turner remained behind, and while Turner helped some of the escaping inmates to break out of the prison, he and Evans also saved several prison staff members' lives during the escape, protecting them from other inmates who wanted to rape and murder them, like the Briley Brothers. Evans said he originally stood against a wall and stayed out of conflict until he saw inmates strip, bound, and begin sexually assaulting a nurse, at which point he stopped them and convinced them that it would be more difficult for them to negotiate for clemency if they harmed the guards they held hostage. One unidentified guard stated in a published report a few days after the escapes, "I owe my life, as do all the other [guards], to [Wilbert] Evans and [Willie] Turner." One of Evans's attorneys, Jonathan Shapiro, told the press, "This kind of behavior needs to be rewarded because it was the right thing to do. It's also right as a matter of policy to put the message out in putting down prison uprisings." Truesdale's widow also questioned Evans's motives for protecting the guards, accusing Evans of engaging in a "ploy, to save the people to help save himself," although Evans's attorneys, a former administrator for the Virginia Department of Corrections, and a criminology professor from Virginia Commonwealth University who once worked as a corrections official insisted that Evans's motive did not matter, that "a life saved is a life saved," and rewarding Evans with mercy for his good behavior would provide encouragement for other inmates to improve their own behavior. National Public Radio (NPR) and The Virginian-Pilot later called Evans's execution "one of the worst in Virginia's history."

An operations officer who presided over Evans's execution stated that Evans only experienced a nosebleed; she posited that witnesses believed blood came from other orifices on Evans's body because the shape of the mask placed over Evans's face forced blood to flow in a way that gave the impression that Evans's eyes and mouth were bleeding as well. Fred A. Leuchter, billed at the time as an "execution consultant for 16 states," said he did not believe in the operations officer's theory that the mask shape caused any misunderstanding amongst witnesses regarding the source of Evans's bleeding. The state medical examiner's office completed an autopsy which found that Evans's bleeding began from his right nostril.

In May 2011, the Alexandria Adult Detention Center was formally renamed the William G. Truesdale ADC, in honor of Evans's victim. Later the same day, Truesdale's son was sworn in as Alexandria's new deputy sheriff.

NPR recordings and records On January 19, 2023, NPR released photos, documents, and tape recordings of four executions in Virginia's electric chair: those of Richard Lee Whitley in 1987, Alton Waye in 1989, Richard T. Boggs in July 1990, and Evans. The tapes once belonged to a former corrections official who privately donated them to the Library of Virginia, Virginia's state library, in Richmond, in 2006; within the library, they were marked as "restricted."