The incredible life and wrongful conviction of the late Boise bootblack James Dean Walker

If Jim Walker had been just a master bootblack, shining the shoes of Idaho governors, legislators, mayors, lawyers and power players, he would have led a fascinating life.

If the most interesting thing about him was that he shined Elvis Presley’s boots, chatted with Frank Sinatra over a $100 polish and shined the shoes of Raquel Welch and Ann-Margret, it would have been more interesting than most.

“He was really good at what he did,” former state Sen. Bart Davis, a regular customer, told me in a phone interview. “He was the kind of guy who would put a shine on your shoes, but he’d put a smile on your face, as well.”

But Walker, who died Jan. 24 at the age of 82, had a life story that was more extraordinary than that. It involves a policeman who was shot to death, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

His obituary, which ran in the Sunday Idaho Statesman, grew more fascinating by the paragraph.

Walker had been convicted of murdering a police officer in Arkansas in 1963. He was sentenced to death and then life in prison, spent several years in the notorious Cummins Arkansas State Prison, escaped while on furlough and spent four years on the lam before being returned to prison.

He insisted he did not kill the officer. He eventually was freed when a federal appeals court found evidence suppression and after new evidence determined that Walker indeed was not the person who fired the fatal shot.

Eventually he returned to Boise. But not many people in Boise knew the details of Walker’s life, as he unassumingly shined shoes for 23 years downtown.

Davis, who was the Idaho Senate majority leader and then U.S. Attorney, said he didn’t learn of Walker’s past for years after Walker started shining Davis’ shoes.

“We would even talk about criminal justice issues, and he never once shared with me his life experience until it became more public later on,” Davis said. Walker was more interested in talking about his aunt, whom he loved and was caring for, Davis said.

In fact, a 2013 feature story in the Idaho Statesman about Walker made not a mention of Walker’s significant past.

How significant it was.

Fateful bar fight

James Dean Walker was born on Sept. 11, 1940, in Boise, and he and his sister, Ila Louise, were abandoned when they were young and bounced around in the foster care system, according to his obituary. Walker joined the Army, went to France, returned to Idaho and eventually settled in the Lake Tahoe area, where he learned shoe repair and shining.

On a trip through Little Rock, Arkansas, on April 16, 1963, Walker got into a bar fight and fled the scene. When two officers stopped his vehicle, police shot Walker five times, and one of the officers was shot and killed. Walker was accused of killing the officer, even though the pistol Walker was holding hadn’t fired a round.

After just 12 minutes of deliberations, a jury convicted Walker and sentenced him to death, according to an article in the University of North Dakota Law journal. He spent time on death row but was granted a new trial because of prejudicial and irrelevant testimony.

Incredibly, the same judge was assigned to the second trial, which ended, perhaps unsurprisingly, in another conviction. But this time it was a sentence of life in prison.

Escape

While in prison, Walker underwent a religious conversion, which allowed him furloughs. It was during one of these furloughs to Memphis, Tennessee, when Walker walked away and returned to California and Lake Tahoe, picking up where his previous life had left off.

He lived undetected for four years until 1979, when he was arrested and ordered back to Arkansas, according to an article by Mara Leveritt for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review.

As if that weren’t enough to this story, Walker fought extradition on the grounds that Arkansas’ prisons were in deplorable condition and that the warden there had threatened to kill him.

Walker’s extradition fight gained notoriety nationally, attracting the attention of a journalist who asked Hillary Clinton, the wife of then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, to intervene. Gov. Clinton did intervene — by fighting in court to bring Walker back to Arkansas, “until every last dog is hung.”

Walker’s extradition case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against Walker in 1980.

In the meantime, though, Walker’s case further shined a light on the poor living conditions in the Arkansas prison system, which had garnered the attention of celebrities, news reporters, a book and the movie “Brubaker,” starring Robert Redford, which had come out around the same time.

All the while, Walker maintained his innocence, drawing the attention of lawyers who revived Walker’s case, finally winning him an exoneration in 1985.

One of the judges on the appeals court that exonerated Walker, Judge Myron H. Bright, pointed to the Walker case as one of the highlights of his nearly 50-year career.

“When you think about what he had been through and what he had endured, he was not bitter,” friend and lawyer Newal Squyres told me in a phone interview. “He did not look back with bitterness. There’s no doubt that he wished that he hadn’t found himself in that situation, but he did not commit that crime. He was innocent of that.”

Return to Idaho

After being exonerated, Walker lived near Lake Tahoe before returning to Boise in 1993 to be with his sister and aunt, who have since died, according to Walker’s obituary.

Over the years, Walker shined shoes in Roper’s Clothing Store, at the Shoe Emporium, in the Mode department store, in the lobby of the U.S. Bank Building and finally in the lobby of the Grove Hotel before retiring in 2017.

“He would put a shine on your shoes like no one else,” Squyres said. “There’s plenty of good bootblacks around, but he was a craftsman and took great pride in his craft and plying his craft.”

That’s a sentiment Davis echoed.

“When he retired, you know, I tried a few other shops in town and certainly got a good shine; I’m not suggesting otherwise,” Davis said. “But it just wasn’t the same for me.”

‘Unassuming and gracious way’

According to the 2013 feature story on Walker, he shined his first shoe at age 14 when he had a summer job at Frank’s Shoe Repair on Main Street in the mid-1950s.

By 2013, Walker’s clients included then-Gov. Butch Otter, two former governors and then-Lt. Gov. Brad Little, who is now governor.

“I introduced many legislative friends to him,” Davis said. “Our governor, I would see him occasionally sitting there visiting with him. He had a lot of friends that he influenced with his unassuming and gracious way.”

According to the 2013 article, Walker had shined Little’s sharkskin boots for 12 years. A visit to Walker’s stand was once a regular outing for Little and Davis, both Republicans, and the late Democratic Sen. Clint Stennett, who died in 2010.

“I remember several times sitting there with the two chairs, me on one side and my good friend Clint Stennett on the other,” Davis recalled in our phone call Monday. “We may have quarreled over at the Capitol, but we both loved to go and see (Walker) and get a good shine. … When you’re in the Legislature, you see and participate in a lot of good policy and a lot of stupid, and (Walker) just seemed an equal in the public conversation of the day.”

Davis said he knew Walker for nearly 20 years. He started getting a shoeshine every other week from him when Davis was first elected to the Senate in 1998 until the day Walker retired in 2017.

“I found him to be extremely well-informed, and he seemed to understand the issues of the day at the Legislature, sometimes even more so than some of my colleagues inside of the building,” Davis said. “He had a good horse sense as far as what might be good policy.”

And he was well-read.

“He was always current on public affairs,” Squyres said. “He sat down in his chair, and he always had a copy of the Statesman and a copy of USA Today there.”

Walker’s clientele in 2013 also included then-Boise Mayor Dave Bieter.

“If Jim ever wrote a book, it would contain the secret history of Boise because he hears about everything,” Bieter told Idaho Statesman reporter Anna Webb at the time. “But he never would because he’s too discreet.”

Given Walker’s past, he was discreet, indeed.