Karen Summers & James Lane’s Shootings: What Happened?

Tonight on Dateline NBC, two brothers who were wrongfully convicted on two separate murder charges will be interviewed and share what happened to them.

In the hour-long special, Malcolm Scott and Corey Atchison discuss the struggles they faced in the justice system and their own pact to help get one another out of prison after they were wrongfully convicted.

Malcolm Scott was convicted of the murder of 19-year-old Karen Summers in 1994, and Atchison was convicted of the shooting of James Lane during a robbery in 1990.

Karen Summers Was Shot in a Drive-By Shooting

Feeling safe was rare in North Tulsa.
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On September 10, 1994, according to UMich Law, Karen Summers was shot in the back and two 16 year olds, Alonzo Johnson and  Kenneth Price, were wounded at a house party hosted by members of the Crips street gang in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A maroon-colored car reportedly drove past and several shots were fired.

That night, police recovered shell casings from a .380-caliber weapon in the street, and the next day, they went to the home of Michael Wilson, a member of the Bloods street gang. There, they found the maroon-colored Ford Taurus and caught Wilson trying to hide a .380-caliber semi-automatic pistol under his shirt. He was arrested.

In addition to arresting Wilson, police also arrested De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott who were both 17-year-old members of the same gang. Police told Wilson they believed Carpenter and Scott were responsible for the crime, so Wilson told them that he was just holding the weapon for the men.

Carpenter and Scott were both charged with first-degree murder and two counts of shooting with intent to kill and the use of a vehicle to facilitate the discharge of a weapon. They were convicted and sentenced to life in prison plus 170 years.

In 1995, Wilson admitted to another inmate that Carpenter and Scott were not involved with the shooting, and he told that to a private investigator in 2007 as well.

In 2014, Wilson was set to be executed for the fatal beating of a store clerk in Tulsa, and he gave a video-recorded interview to the Oklahoma Innocence Project in which he admitted that he killed Summers in retaliation for an earlier incident in which members of the rival gang had shot him in the leg.

In 2016, Scott and Carpenter were released on bond and had their convictions overturned.

James Lane Was Fatally Shot in 1990

.@CraigMelvin spoke to two brothers who have spent decades trying to prove their innocence for two different crimes they each say they did not commit.

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According to Tulsa World, James Lane was fatally shot in the summer of 1990. He was shot in the chest with a .25-caliber pistol around 2 a.m. on August 3 in Tulsa.

Atchison, who was eventually convicted for the crime, denied that he was involved with the murder. He said that he and three other people were in a car in the vicinity, but they were not there when the shooting took place.

Atchison was arrested six months later and maintained his innocence throughout the trial. A witness at the time testified he had been coerced into implicating Atchison, but the conviction was upheld by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals in 1994.

Atchison was freed in July 2019 after serving nearly 30 years in prison. District Judge Sharon Holmes found that the case was marred by a “fundamental miscarriage of justice,” according to local reports.

Malcolm Scott & Corey Atchison Jail Sentences: How Long Were the Brothers In Prison?