10 Facts About Delbert Tibbs

Later exonerated, Tibbs became a writer and anti-death penalty activist.

Delbert Tibbs was born June 19,1939, in Shelby, Mississippi; he moved with his family to Chicago at age 12, as part of the Great Migration from the South to the North.

Delbert Tibbs attended the Chicago Theological Seminary from 1970 to 1972.

Delbert Tibbs was hitchhiking in Florida about 220 miles north of the crime scene when he was stopped by police and questioned about the crime.

Delbert Tibbs was picked up in Mississippi two weeks later and sent to Florida.

Delbert Tibbs sought changes in the criminal justice system, especially limits on the use of eyewitness identifications which numerous studies have shown to be unreliable and highly flawed.

Delbert Tibbs was one of six persons featured in the play The Exonerated, based on accounts from death row inmates who were exonerated.

Delbert Tibbs was among the audience when Governor George Ryan of Illinois and other politicians watched a production of the play.

Later Delbert Tibbs was with a group talking to Governor Quinn about injustices in the penal system.

Delbert Tibbs's poetry appears in the chapbook anthology Beccaria, edited by poet Aja Beech.