Scott Minton

The Crime

On the morning of Oct. 31, 1993, 49-year-old L.W. reported to police that she had been robbed, sexually assaulted, and shot in her home in Bradley County, Tennessee. When police arrived, she was in her living room with a bullet wound in her left leg.

L.W.  told deputies that she had just taken a shower when she heard a noise and saw a young white man holding a knife. She said another man and a woman also were there, although she did not see the other man. She said she was forced to her bedroom where the attackers took around $200 and some jewelry from her purse. They took her to the living room where the woman found a .22-caliber pistol. 

L.W. said she was sexually assaulted repeatedly. L.W. said the young man had placed the gun near her leg and it went off, striking her upper thigh. She said the man dropped the gun and all three fled. L.W. said she picked it up and fired one shot, then called a neighbor, who came over and called 911. 

L.W. told Detective Robert Hyden that the young man with a knife was a white male under 6 feet tall, about 20 years old, had brownish hair which was long in the back and short on top. She said the woman was white, about 16 or 17 years old, about 100 pounds and had dirty blond hair. L.W. was unable to describe the other man except to say she had heard his voice and saw his legs. She said he wore jeans and appeared to be heavyset. She said that during the assault she heard this man say he had found what he was looking for.

The Investigation

The home where the attack occurred was owned by L.W.’s parents. Her father told police that $7,600 in cash had been stolen from its hiding place in a closet.

At 1:15 p.m., police in neighboring Rhea County arrived at the Dayton, Tennessee home of 20-year-old Samuel Scott Minton to question his friend, 17-year-old Shannon Blaylock, about the attack. L.W. had been a foster parent to Mr. Blaylock from 1987 to 1989. L.W. had told detectives that the assault began between 10:30 and 11 a.m. in her home, which was an hour away from Dayton and required taking a ferry across the Tennessee River. 

Investigators asked Mr. Minton and Mr. Blaylock to go to the Rhea County Sheriff’s Department for questioning. During his interview, Mr. Minton said that on that morning he had made several trips in and around Dayton to get car parts and gas. Mr. Minton had two receipts from the Advance Auto Parts Store, with recorded times of 10:06 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. Detectives took him to the store where a clerk confirmed he had been there that morning. Separately, Mr. Blaylock gave a statement that agreed with Mr. Minton’s account.

L.W. looked at several photo arrays, one of which included Mr. Minton. She did not make a selection. She looked at arrays including female suspects and selected 21-year-old Angela Manning, who was Mr. Blaylock’s girlfriend, as the woman involved in the attack.  

At around 11 p.m., Mr. Minton was taken to the Bradley County Sheriff’s Office and held until 5 a.m. on November 1. Officers told Mr. Minton that he could go home if he agreed to a search of his trailer. Although he could not read, he signed the waiver. The search did not turn up any incriminating evidence. On the ride home, according to Mr. Minton, the officers told him numerous details of the crime.

Later that day, L.W. told Detective Anthony Benefield that Mr. Blaylock had called her on Oct. 30, the day before the attack, and said he was thinking about coming to pay her a visit. She said he wanted to know if she was going to be at church that Sunday. 

On Nov. 2, detectives took Mr. Minton back to Bradley County for more questioning. During the interview, the detectives continued to reveal details of the crime, based on L.W.’s account. They asked him about putting cigarettes on her chest and told him about the money stolen from the house. They said he would feel better if he confessed. Eventually, Mr. Minton said he was at the home, and that Mr. Blaylock had tied up L.W. He then revised his account after detectives informed him that this conflicted with the evidence. 

L.W. viewed a live lineup that day and selected Mr. Minton as one of the assailants. Also on Nov. 2, Ms. Manning gave a statement — which she later said was false — that inculpated herself, Mr. Minton, and Mr. Blaylock in the attack. All three were arrested. Mr. Minton was charged with five counts of aggravated rape, one count of aggravated kidnapping, one count of aggravated robbery, one count of theft over $1,000, one count of aggravated burglary, and one count of conspiracy to commit aggravated burglary. Ms. Manning and Mr. Blaylock faced similar charges. They were tried separately.

The Trial

Prior to his trial, Mr. Minton moved to suppress his statement to sheriff’s deputies and L.W.’s identification. He said officers had coerced his statement and had not allowed him to speak with an attorney. Mr. Minton also said L.W.’s identification was tainted. The motions were denied.

Mr. Minton went to trial in March 1994. No physical or forensic evidence connected him to the incident. L.W. testified that Mr. Minton and Ms. Manning terrorized and sexually assaulted her while Mr. Blaylock ransacked the house. 

Her account had changed over time. She had not initially asserted that Mr. Minton had sodomized her, explaining that she was embarrassed. She also had not initially claimed that Ms. Manning had sexually assaulted her. 

Mr. Minton testified and denied any involvement in the attack. He said he had never even been to Bradley County before the sheriff’s deputies took him there. He said he had been coerced into confessing after being denied a request for an attorney, and after he had been held in isolation in a cell with no running water and no working toilet. He said that he could not read and did not understand the waiver of his rights that he signed. 

He repeated his account of the morning of the attack, saying that he and Mr. Blaylock drove around Dayton in search of repair parts for his Camaro. He said they went to Advanced Auto a little after 10 a.m. where Mr. Minton bought a transmission seal and a screwdriver, receiving separate receipts. 

Mr. Minton said that when the police transported him from Rhea County to Bradley County, they drove 95 miles an hour while he was handcuffed in the back seat. The officers swore at him and demanded he confess. Eventually, he said, the officers told him to “just say that you was [sic] there and just put everything, all we have done told you and what you have heard and everything in details and just put that you and Angie and Shannon … in the picture and we will get you out of the cell.”

Mr. Minton said that after the officers started recording the interview, they stopped and started over when he asked for an attorney.

Mr. Minton said the statement he gave just repeated the information the officers told him.

More than a dozen witnesses, including clerks at Advanced Auto and friends and family members, testified that Mr. Minton had been in Dayton all morning. 

The prosecution argued that daylight savings time had begun on Oct. 31, which required setting clocks back one hour. An equipment technician at Advanced Auto Parts testified that the clocks in the company’s computer system had to be manually reset. Therefore, according to the prosecution, that meant Mr. Minton and Mr. Blaylock had actually been at the store just after 9 a.m., giving them and Ms. Manning plenty of time to get to L.W.’s home.

The jury convicted Mr. Minton of all charges on March 31, 1994, and he was sentenced to 76 years in prison.

Mr. Blaylock was convicted on May 25, 1994, on conspiracy to commit burglary, aggravated burglary, theft, and aggravated robbery. He received a sentence of 23 years in prison. 

Before Ms. Manning’s trial, in July 1994, her attorney sought to introduce impeachment evidence against L.W., including that at the time she reported the attack, she had an outstanding arrest warrant in Bradley County for writing bad checks that had been issued on Oct. 22, nine days earlier. L.W.’s ex-husband testified at a pre-trial hearing that L.W. had staged a burglary at their home in 1975, and that she had staged a purported kidnapping scheme involving their daughter around 1973. Mr. Anderson also said that L.W. had written bad checks during their marriage and twice intentionally burned herself with cigarettes during fights.

Judge Steven Bebb excluded all but the evidence of the pending charges against L.W. At the trial, L.W. testified that at the time she wrote the bad checks, she was suffering from a “calcium storm” and did not know what she was doing. Ms. Manning was convicted on July 14, 1994, of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated rape, aggravated burglary, theft, and conspiracy. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Mr. Minton appealed, arguing that Judge Bebb erred in denying his motions to suppress, and that the State had failed to disclose L.W.’s arrest warrant. In August 1996, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals vacated Mr. Minton’s conviction for aggravated kidnapping, but upheld the rest of his convictions.

The Exoneration

In 2019, attorneys for the Tennessee Innocence Project and the Innocence Project began representing Mr. Minton. On March 2, 2023, the attorneys filed a motion for post-conviction relief (PCR) and a separate petition for a writ of error coram nobis.

The PCR motion said that in 2021, several pieces of crime-scene evidence — the pantyhose used to bind L.W., an aerosol spray can, and a bottle of lotion — had been tested for the presence of DNA. Mr. Minton was excluded as a contributor to genetic material.

The motion also included reports from Dr. Nancy Franklin, an expert on eyewitness misidentification, and Dr. Brian Cutler, an expert on interrogations and false confessions.

In Dr. Franklin’s report, she said that stress and fear would have impacted L.W.’s ability to accurately describe her assailants. Dr. Franklin also said that L.W.’s failure to select Mr. Minton from the first photo array “carries diagnostic evidence of his innocence.” She said that L.W.’s selection of Mr. Minton in the live lineup was likely “contaminated” by this earlier exposure.

Dr. Cutler’s report said that Mr. Minton’s interrogation contained many of the factors that lead to a false confession. Dr. Cutler noted that Mr. Minton had cognitive deficits and said that such persons were more susceptible to pressure, especially when applied by an authority figure. Dr. Cutler also noted that  many of the details of the crime were “essentially spoon-fed to Mr. Minton, who was able to produce very little information independently.”

The petition for the writ of error suggested that the reported crime might have been a hoax and part of an effort by L.W. to steal money from her parents. In addition, an examination of the cylinder of the .22-caliber pistol that L.W. said she used after she was shot showed that the fourth and eighth chambers were empty. Greg Kinman, a firearms expert, said in a report: “If the gun had been fired consecutively, you would expect two consecutive chambers to contain spent bullets.”

The petition also included a report by Dr. Shana Dowell, a gynecologist with extensive experience examining rape victims. Dr. Dowell said she found it “notable that none of the medical records from that day” documented the type of injuries that were consistent with L.W.’s account of the attack.

By the time that Judge Amanda Dunn held a three-day evidentiary hearing on both the PCR motion and the writ petition in October 2024, L.W. and Mr. Blaylock were dead. 

In addition to the expert reports, Alan Ruddick, one of the employees at the auto parts store, testified in 1993, Rhea County had a law preventing most stores, including the auto parts store, from opening before 10 a.m. on a Sunday. He knew that Oct. 31 was a “fall back” day, but that wouldn’t have made a difference about when the store opened, he said.

Jack Ryan, a former captain in the Providence Police Department in Rhode Island, testified as an expert on police procedures. He said that the investigation was “one of the worst I’ve seen.” The detectives poorly documented their investigation and failed to obtain fingerprints from the crime scene or get L.W.’s rape kit analyzed. He said they ignored Mr. Minton’s independent alibi witnesses and didn’t track down obvious potential witnesses, such as the ferry workers who would have seen Mr. Minton, Mr. Blaylock, and Ms. Manning on the Sunday they were said to have committed the crime.

On Dec. 10, 2024, Judge Dunn granted Mr. Minton’s motion for post-conviction relief and vacated his conviction. Judge Dunn said that Mr. Minton’s photograph shouldn’t have been included in the first photo array because he didn’t resemble L.W.’s description. That flawed viewing made it more likely that L.W. would select him in the live lineup. The ruling also said that Mr. Minton’s confession was contaminated “because the officers essentially provided many of the details of the attack” and that Mr. Minton “simply agreed that those were the facts.”

Although Judge Dunn denied the writ petition, she noted: “Based on the new evidence and facts presented, it is unclear if a crime occurred, but it is abundantly clear that Mr. Minton had absolutely nothing to do with the events in Bradley County on October 31, 1993.” 

Mr. Minton was released from prison on Dec. 18, 2024.

On Jan. 23, 2025, the prosecution dismissed the charges.