John Nolley

The Crime

On Dec. 11, 1996, 32-year-old Sharon McLane finished her shift at Advantage Rent-A-Car and went to her home in Bedford, Texas, about 15 miles northeast of Fort Worth. On Dec. 14, when she did not show up for her 7 a.m. shift, her supervisor asked one of Ms. McLane’s friends to check on her.

The door to her apartment was unlocked. The television, Christmas lights, and dining room lights were on. Ms. McLane’s body, partially nude, was lying face down on the floor between the dining room and the kitchen in a pool of blood. Two kitchen knives were under her body. A third knife was near her feet. There was no sign of forced entry or a robbery. Her purse was sitting on a chair in the living room. Blood spattered from multiple directions was present on the walls, refrigerator, cupboards, and a partition. There was a blood smear on an open kitchen drawer.

A bloodstained paper found under her body contained a partial palm print imprinted in the blood. A bloodstained sock that may have been used to wipe up blood was found in the living room; its mate, which contained no blood, was found in the hamper in the bathroom.

The Investigation

A pathologist conducted an autopsy and found 57 wounds—37 puncture wounds and 20 slash wounds. Ms. McLane’s trachea and spinal cord were cut. A toxicology report was negative for drugs. A precise time of death was not determined, although the pathologist estimated she was killed prior to 10 a.m. on Dec. 13.

Police canvassed the apartment complex. Two neighbors, Charles and Sandra Hammond, reported hearing “blood-curdling screams” a little after 3 p.m. on Dec. 12. Mr. Hammond said that less than a half hour later, he saw a tall white man wearing a black cowboy hat walk from the breezeway adjacent to Ms. McLane’s apartment. Mr. Hammond said he had not seen the man before.

Ron Herrin, a maintenance worker in the apartment complex, reported seeing a white man in a black cowboy hat coming from the direction of Ms. McLane’s apartment at about the same time. The man, Mr. Herrin said, seemed “nervous and trying to avoid me.” 

Police attempted to create a timeline for Ms. McLane, a single mother with four children, beginning with her departure from her job on Dec. 11. They learned that at 6 p.m., after going for a jog, she spoke to a former co-worker, Brad Smith, with whom she was romantically involved. Mr. Smith told police Ms. McLane told him she was very tired and was staying in for the night. At 9 p.m., Ms. McLane spoke to the grandmother of her late husband.

Police also found two messages on Ms. McLane’s answering machine from Cajleb McNair, who said he was returning a pager notification. Police determined that Mr. McNair had been paged by 22-year-old John Nolley, a friend of Mr. McNair. 

Mr. Nolley, a light-skinned Black man, and his live-in girlfriend, Amy Degeer, were friends of Ms. McLane. They occasionally watched Dallas Cowboys football games together at the apartment that Mr. Nolley and Ms. Degeer shared. Just a few weeks earlier, Ms. McLane and her daughter had been there for Thanksgiving dinner.

When the police first interviewed Mr. Nolley, he told the police that he had not seen Ms. McLane on Dec. 11. He said he met up with a friend, J.W., then joined Mr. McNair at a bar for a few beers, and afterward met a friend named Mike before going home. 

In a second interview, however, Mr. Nolley admitted that he did see Ms. McLane that on Dec. 11. He said he brought some Keystone beer to her apartment as well as some marijuana, which he sold her. They had smoked some marijuana, he drank a beer, and he then went home. Mr. Nolley said he lied initially about being there because selling and smoking marijuana violated his probation.

Mr. Nolley said he had paged Mr. McNair to Ms. McLane’s telephone, which explained why Mr. McNair had left two messages there. Police found a Keystone beer bottle with Mr. Nolley’s fingerprint in Ms. McLane’s trash.

Ms. Degeer told police he arrived home from Ms. McLane’s around 11:15 p.m. She did not notice anything unusual about Mr. Nolley’s appearance or demeanor.

Police determined that at about 11 p.m., prior to Mr. Nolley’s return home, Ms. McLane had a telephone conversation with another man she was dating who had moved to Salt Lake City. He had asked her to check the Texas lottery numbers for him. He would later say Ms. McLane was in good spirits and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. 

On Aug. 13, 1997, Mr. Nolley was arrested and charged with murder.

The Trial

In May 1997, Mr. Nolley went to trial in Tarrant County Criminal District Court. The prosecution contended that Mr. Nolley stabbed Ms. McLane to death, then cleaned himself up and went home, relying almost solely on the testimony of three witnesses. 

John O’Brien testified that he was in custody in the Tarrant County Jail at the same time Mr. Nolley was there awaiting trial. Mr. O’Brien testified that in October 1997, while in the jail law library, Mr. Nolley admitted to committing the crime.

Mr. O’Brien testified that Mr. Nolley told him that he went to the apartment to rob Ms. McLane, that she resisted and he killed her. 

Mr. Nolley’s defense lawyer challenged the testimony, noting that there was no evidence of a robbery – Ms. McLane’s purse and money were still in the apartment – and the improbability of Mr. Nolley trying to rob a good friend whom others, including his girlfriend, knew he was going to visit that night.

Mr. O’Brien, who had nine prior felony convictions, was in jail on charges of orchestrating the theft of more than $75,000 worth of machinery. Mr. O’Brien had pled guilty to those charges and received probation. Mr. O’Brien testified that his lenient sentence was not related to his testimony, that he had been promised nothing by the prosecution, and that his deal was in place before he told anyone about his conversation with Mr. Nolley. Mr. O’Brien also testified that he had never been an informant for the prosecution in any other case.

Mr. Nolley’s friend and former high school classmate, J.W., and J.W.’s girlfriend, D.G., also testified about statements they said Mr. Nolley had made.

J.W. said that on Dec. 12, 1996, the day after Mr. Nolley visited Ms. McLane, he had a telephone conversation with Mr. Nolley, during which Mr. Nolley said he had “R.I.P.ed” someone. J.W. said he asked Mr. Nolley if he had beaten someone up, and Mr. Nolley replied, “No, I stabbed them.”

J.W. said that Mr. Nolley further explained that he “thought it was through. And they were getting back up and he did it to finish them off again.” J.W. added that Mr. Nolley said he had “some blood on him and wiped what he could off.”

During cross-examination, J.W. admitted that when he had recounted the conversation to his girlfriend, he said that Mr. Nolley had “R.I.P.ed a guy.” J.W. also admitted that he thought at the time that Mr. Nolley was exaggerating and “telling me something that maybe wasn’t true.”

In fact, J.W. admitted, when he learned that Ms. McLane was dead, he had asked Mr. Nolley whether he had been referring to her in the conversation and Mr. Nolley had said he was referring to someone else. 

J.W. and his girlfriend also testified that they were at Mr. Nolley’s apartment in February 1997 while the investigation was still ongoing. J.W. said Mr. Nolley had retrieved two pairs of shoes from his closet, one belonging to Mr. Nolley and the other to Mr. Nolley’s girlfriend, and said he was going to take them to a friend’s home.

J.W. and his girlfriend testified that they saw what appeared to be a maroon-colored stain on Mr. Nolley’s shoes, although both conceded they were high on marijuana at the time.

The defense noted that no such shoes, or any bloodstained item at all, had ever been recovered from Mr. Nolley or the friend’s home. J.W. admitted that in the 10 months leading up to Mr. Nolley’s trial, he had been facing a domestic assault charge, and that one week prior to Mr. Nolley’s trial, after pleading guilty, he had been sentenced to probation.

The apartment complex residents who heard the screams on Dec. 12, the day after Mr. Nolley visited Ms. McLane, testified about the timing of the screaming. The defense presented evidence that Mr. Nolley was at work at Avian Kingdom, a pet supply store, at the time the residents heard the screaming.

The defense noted that the toxicology report from the autopsy showed that there were no marijuana metabolites in Ms. McLane’s system. A forensic pathologist testified that if Ms. McLane had smoked marijuana 12 to 13 hours prior to her death, the metabolites would be present. The defense argued that evidence showed that Ms. McLane was killed more than 12 to 13 hours after Mr. Nolley left the apartment. The defense contended she had been alive at least until the morning of Dec. 12 to have fully metabolized the marijuana. 

The defense noted that Ms. McLane was a meticulous housekeeper and yet two hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes and an overturned ashtray were found on a coffee table. Based on her failure to come to her office to pick up her paycheck on Dec. 13 as she did routinely every payday, the defense contended Ms. McLane was killed sometime that day before she could clean up the overturned ashtray.

DNA testing, which was still in rudimentary form in 1996, was performed on bloodstains, a black briefcase, a bloodstained sock, and various swabs taken of blood at the scene. None of the tests linked Mr. Nolley to the crime.

Bill Bailey, a fingerprint analyst, testified that he had examined the bloodstained memo paper found under Ms. McLane’s body. He said he attempted to compare a partial palm print left in blood on one side of the paper to both Ms. McLane and Mr. Nolley. He said the comparison had been conducted “with negative results.” He testified that meant he was unable to draw any conclusions, either including or excluding Mr. Nolley.

A trace analyst for the prosecution testified that “brownish blonde” or “brown” hairs found at the scene were Caucasian and did not come from Ms. McLane or Ms. Nolley. Two of the hairs were found on Ms. McLane’s shirt and two were found on the toilet bowl in the bloodstained bathroom.

Friends testified that Mr. Nolley was shocked, stunned, and upset when police told him of Ms. McLane’s murder. 

On May 27, 1998, the jury convicted Mr. Nolley of capital murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. 

The Exoneration

In 2000, Mr. Nolley sought help from the Innocence Project. In 2004, while still on the Innocence Project waiting list, Mr. Nolley, acting without a lawyer, filed a request for DNA testing. 

In 2006, the Innocence Project began investigating, and, in 2008, filed a supplemental motion for DNA testing, which had become more sophisticated and discerning in the decade since the trial. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office agreed that the testing should go forward and, for the next several years, worked cooperatively with the Innocence Project to re-investigate the case. 

In 2015, Tarrant County District Attorney Sharon Wilson formed a Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), which began investigating the case. In addition to DNA testing, digital fingerprint analysis was conducted.

The testing showed that one of the knives recovered next to Ms. McLane’s body contained blood from a male who was not Mr. Nolley. In addition, Ms. McLane and Mr. Nolley were excluded as the source of the bloody partial palm print on the memo.

The prosecution also discovered a trove of documents and records that had not been disclosed to Mr. Nolley’s trial defense lawyer. The records showed that Mr. O’Brien had lied when he said he had never been an informant before and when he said he had not received favorable treatment in return for his testimony. The trial prosecutor, James Cook, was aware of the lies.

In April 2016, Innocence Project attorneys Barry Scheck and Nina Morrison filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus seeking to vacate Mr. Nolley’s conviction. The petition disclosed J.W.’s grand jury testimony, which showed that his trial testimony was false. J.W. had told the grand jury that he believed Mr. Nolley’s statement that he “R.I.P.ed” someone was a made-up story to impress him. J.W. also had said that he never knew Mr. Nolley to be a violent person and that he was always “real protective of women.” 

J.W. also had told the grand jury that Mr. Nolley denied killing Ms. McLane and that he believed Mr. Nolley was telling the truth.

The CIU also discovered a note in the prosecution file relating to the bloody partial palm print. The grand jury prosecutor had written, “How can we indict Nolley if bloody palm is not his?” The word “not” was underlined twice.

The Innocence Project argued that the note indicated the trial testimony provided by the fingerprint analyst, which stated that the print was unsuitable for comparison, was inaccurate; in fact, Mr. Nolley had been excluded as the source of the print. 

In May 2016, Tarrant County Criminal District Court Judge Louis Sturns, at the request of the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office and the Innocence Project, recommended to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that Mr. Nolley’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus be granted and his conviction be vacated. 

On May 17, 2016, Nolley was released on bond.

In May 2018, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the writ and vacated Mr. Nolley’s conviction. On Oct. 3, 2018, the prosecution dismissed the case.

In 2018, Mr. Nolley received $1.5 million in compensation from the state of Texas and a $6,500 monthly annuity.