EXONERATED MEN
The Full Stories from the National Registry
Reginald Adams
On October 7, 1979, 24-year-old Cathy Ulfers was shot to death when she apparently interrupted a burglary in her home in New Orleans, Louisiana.Although her husband, New Orleans Police Officer Ronald Ulfers was considered a suspect, the crime went unsolved. There were no fingerprints and no eyewitnesses.
In February 1980, an informant told New Orleans Detective Martin Venezia that there were rumors on the street that 26-year-old Reginald Adams and a man named John Dupart had a role in the crime. However, Venezia was unable to confirm the tip as anything more than a false rumor.
In September 1980, Adams was arrested on an unrelated burglary charge and was being held in the New Orleans jail. Because police pressured members of his family to incriminate him, Adams asked to speak to Frank Ruiz, the detective on his case. Ruiz was aware that Venezia had pursued the rumor about Adams committing the Ulfers murder, so Ruiz brought Venezia to the meeting with Adams.
As a result, Ruiz and Venezia questioned Adams about the Ulfers case. After nearly five hours of interrogation, the detectives said that Adams confessed to the crime on audio tape and implicated Dupart and another man, Anthony Calcagno. All threewere charged with first-degree murder committed during the course of a burglary.
However, in 1981, the charges against Calcagno and Dupart were dismissed for lack of evidence. Adams went on trial in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in 1982, but a mistrial was declared because the jurors overheard a comment by the trial judge that they were not supposed to hear. A second trial was halted in January 1983 when Adams' lawyer asked for a hearing to determine if his client was competent to stand trial.
Adams went on trial a third time in 1983. Ruiz and Venezia testified that Adams first said that he and Dupart burglarized the home and that the murder was a contract killing orchestrated by Calcagno. Police said Adams changed that account to say that Calcagno had set up the burglary and that Ulfers came home while he and Dupart were in the home. The detectives also testified that no murder weapon was discovered and that no objects taken in the burglary had been recovered.
This testimony was false. The detectives and the prosecutors in the case, Ronald Bodenheimer and Harold J. Gilbert Jr., deliberately concealed critical information that pointed to other suspects who had no connection to Adams.
In fact, Venezia and Ruiz recovered the murder weapon within a month after the crime-and nearly a year before detectives obtained Adams' confession. The gun was matched to the bullets that killed Ulfers and was traced to two people, Roland Burns, and his sister,Alice Burns, who had no connection to Adams. Two witnesses told the detectives that two days after the murder, Roland Burns tried to sell them a ring identical to one stolen from the Ulfers home. The detectives found evidence that Alice Burns had access to the gun the day before the murder and that on the day of the murder she was staying at a motel 2.5 miles from the Ulfers home.
The motel manager told the detectives that on the morning after the murder, Alice Burns departed in such a hurry that she left all of her belongings behind. In October 1979, Roland Burnswas arrested and had a bracelet in his pocket. On November 5, 1979, Ronald Ulfers identified the bracelet as his wife's. On the recommendation of the Orleans District Attorney's Office, Burns was charged with accessory to first degree murder and possession of stolen property. But on November 16, 1979, when the formal charges were filed, Burns was only charged with possession of stolen property.Two months later, on December 17, 1979, the case against RolandBurns was dismissed by the prosecution. The police reports linking him to Ulfers' case were never disclosed to Adams' attorneys. Alice Burns was never located by police.
Adams took the witness stand in his own defense and denied involvement in the crime. The defense noted that there were inconsistencies between the facts and the confession. Adams first said the victim was male and that he entered the home through a rear door, although Ulfers was female and entry was through the front door. Adams' initial statement misstated what was stolen from the house, the day of the crime, the time of the crime and that his gun was a .38 caliber pistol when the bullets that killed Ulfers were .32-caliber. In addition, the transcript of the interrogation showed that Adams said he shot Ulfers four times, although she had actually been shot seven times. These inconsistencies were corrected in a second statement that detectives recorded after they took Adams out of the jail cell to the scene of the crime and brought him back to the jail.
Adams told the jury that the detectives gave him drugs and alcohol, fed him details of the crime and promised that he would be released if he confessed and implicated Calcagno and Dupart. The defense tried to call Calcagno as a witness because he allegedly had admitted that he tookpart in the crime but Adams did not. When Calcagno asserted his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself and refused to testify, the defense attempted to call two other witnesses to testify that Calcagno had made that admission to them, but the trial judge refused to admit the testimony.
In August 1983, the jury convicted Adams of first-degree murder committed during a burglary. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 1989, the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the conviction and ordereda new trial. The court held that the judge had erroneously allowed copies of Adams' confession to go into the jury room.
In July 1990 Adams went on trial for the Ulfers' murder for the fourth time. The prosecution had reduced the charge to second degree murder. Adams was convicted again, largely on the basis of his confession, by a jury verdict of 10-2and he was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2006, Cathy Ulfers' husband, Ronald, who had retired as a police officer in 1989, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for murdering his second wife, Debra, whose body was found floating face-down in the canal behind their home in 1996.
In 2013, lawyers at the Innocence Project New Orleans began re-investigating Adams' case and discovered the documents showing that the murder weapon had been recovered and linked to Roland and Alice Burns. These documents showed that the testimony by Venezia and Ruiz that neither the murder weapon nor any of the stolen property was ever located was false. The documents also revealed that the prosecution had knowingly told Adams defenseattorneysthat no evidence was ever recovered and that no forensic examination, including ballistics testing, had been conducted.
On May 2, 2014, the lawyers contacted Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro to inform him of their discovery. Just 10 days later, on May 12, 2014, Cannizzaro and Innocence Project New Orleans lawyers filed a joint motion to vacate Adams' conviction. The judge granted the motion, the charge was immediately dismissed and Adams was released.
"I will not tolerate intentional misconduct on the part of police or prosecutors," Cannizzaro said in a statement that apologized to Adams for an unfair trial and an unjust conviction. Cannizzaro said the prosecutors' handling of the case was "shameful. Not only did their intentional acts harm Reginald Adams, who was wrongfully incarcerated for more than three decades, but also it denied this community any opportunity to hold the real perpetrator criminally responsible for this violent crime."
In 1999, Bodenheimer was elected judge in Jefferson Parish. In 2003, he pled guilty to federal corruption charges and was sentenced to 46 months in prison.
In March 2015, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell's office said it found in its own investigation that Adams was "factually innocent." As a result, Caldwell's office agreed that Adams would receive $250,000 over 10 years - the maximum allowed under the law governing the state's Innocence Compensation Fund. Adams also was eligible for another $80,000 to compensate him for "lost life opportunities."
In May 2015, Adams filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of New Orleans, the New Orleans police department and the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office. The lawsuit was settled for $1.25 million in June 2017.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 05-13-2014 / Last Update Date: 07-11-2017
Malcolm Alexander
At about 11:30 a.m. on November 8, 1979, a black man walked into a newly opened antique store in Gretna, Louisiana. The owner, B.N., a 39-year-old white woman, became suspicious. She attempted to direct him to furniture outside, but as she walked to the front door, he grabbed her from behind and clubbed her in the head with a handgun. He then forced her into a bathroom at the rear of the shop and raped her at gunpoint.
After he raped her, he led her to the telephone, which had been ringing throughout the attack. As he held her in a chokehold and threatened to shoot her, B.N. completed the call without alerting the caller. The attacker then forced her back into the bathroom and raped her again.
The attacker ordered her not to move and fled. B.N. used a towel to clean herself and called police.
Police found three pubic hairs on the floor of the bathroom and also took the towel into evidence.
B.N. said the attacker was black with a medium complexion, in his early 20s, about six feet tall, and 165-170 pounds. She said he was wearing blue jeans, a dark windbreaker, and a navy blue watch cap. B.N. said that he rode up to the store on a dark orange 10-speed English racing bike.
Police broadcast the description and 10 minutes later, police stopped a black man with his jeans unzipped riding an orange 10-speed bicycle. The man was brought to the outside of antique store, and B.N. stood inside and viewed him through the front window. She said the man was not her attacker.
B.N. was then taken to a hospital where a rape kit was taken.
On November 30, 1979, B.N. saw a man she thought might be her attacker. When police investigated him, they learned he worked at Superior Pontiac, a car dealership. The man's fellow employees said he was a hard worker and was not the type of person to commit a sexual assault. On December 18, 1979, police showed B.N. a photographic lineup, which included the man from Superior Pontiac, but she did not identify anyone as her attacker.
In February 1980, police arrested 20-year-old Malcolm Alexander after a woman accused him of sexual assaulting her. Alexander, who is black, told police the sex occurred after he gave the woman money and that it was consensual. Alexander was not charged in that incident, but a detective believed that he fit B.N.'s description of her attacker, even though he was only 5 feet 9 inches tall.
On March 24, 1980, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department Detective O'Neil De Noux Jr. asked B.N. to view another photographic lineup that included Alexander's photo. De Noux's report said that B.N. identified Alexander, but that her identification was "tentative."
Three days later, on March 27, B.N. viewed a live lineup that included Alexander. He was the only person who was in both lineups-a procedure considered to be improper and suggestive because a person can subconsciously convert the memory of seeing a person in the first lineup into a memory of that person being the perpetrator. Detective De Noux was not present because he was in court, so Detective Marco Nuzzolillo conducted the lineup. Nuzzolillo checked off the box "possible" in his report and next to it wrote "tentative."
Three hours after the live lineup, De Noux returned from court and interviewed B.N. privately. When he emerged, he reported that B.N. now said she was more than 98 percent sure that Alexander was her attacker.
Alexander was arrested and charged with aggravated rape. He went to trial on November 5, 1980. The entire trial-from selection of the jury until the jury's announcement that they found Alexander guilty-lasted one day. The entire trial transcript was only 87 pages long, and his lawyer, Joseph Tosh, did virtually nothing to defend him. It wasn't the first or last time Tosh would fail a client-in 1999 he was disbarred based on more than 50 incidents where he took fees and did little or-frequently-nothing at all and refused to refund the money.
Despite the existence of a rape kit and the towel, both of which contained semen, and the three hairs found on the floor where B.N. was raped, no forensic tests were performed. Neither the prosecutor nor the defense requested any testing on the evidence.
Even though his report of the March 24, 1980 photographic lineup said that B.N.'s identification of Alexander was "tentative," De Noux told the jury that B.N. "without hesitation identified the photograph of Malcolm Alexander as the man who perpetrated the rape on her."
Detective Nuzzolillo, who had conducted the March 27, 1980 live lineup and filled out the report marked "possible" and "tentative," testified simply that B.N. identified Alexander.
The prosecution failed to correct the detectives' testimony or elicit any testimony regarding the police reports listing the identifications as "tentative."
Alexander's attorney never asked any questions on cross-examination about those descriptions. Years later, attorneys for Alexander would be unable to determine whether the prosecution withheld the reports documenting the identifications as "tentative," or if Alexander's attorney had the reports but was so incompetent that he failed to realize their significance.
B.N. testified and identified Alexander as her attacker. Again, no mention was made that her identifications had been labeled as "tentative."
Tosh presented no defense witnesses and never investigated whether Alexander, who had a steady job with a contractor at the time of the rape, had a viable alibi. Tosh made no opening statement to the jury and his closing argument took up just four pages of the trial transcript.
The jury was sent out to deliberate at 5:20 p.m. By 6:16 p.m.-just 56 minutes later-they had voted to convict Alexander, returned to announce the verdict, and been dismissed. The judge sentenced Alexander to life in prison without parole.
Tosh assured Alexander and his family that he would file an appeal, but he never did. When family members ultimately discovered that no appeal had been filed, they sought the help of another lawyer. That lawyer was granted permission to file an appeal although the filing deadline had lapsed. The appeal, however, was denied by the Louisiana Court of Appeal.
In 1996, after reading a news article about DNA testing, Alexander asked the Innocence Project in New York for help. However, a search for the physical evidence was unsuccessful-court officials informed the Innocence Project that the evidence had been inadvertently destroyed in 1984 during a mass destruction of several hundred boxes of evidence from closed cases. A deputy clerk attributed the destruction to "human error, which should not have happened."
The Innocence Project closed the case but Alexander forged on. In 2004, after Louisiana enacted a post-conviction DNA testing law, he filed a motion for testing, hoping it would spark further searches for evidence. He also filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
In 2013, his efforts were rewarded when the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department crime laboratory discovered the hairs that were recovered from the bathroom floor where B.N. was raped.
The Innocence Project and the prosecution agreed to DNA testing on the hairs in 2015, and testing was performed in 2016. The tests showed that all three came from the same person. Alexander was excluded as the source of the hairs.
In 2017, the Innocence Project, joined by Innocence Project New Orleans, filed a motion seeking to vacate Alexander's conviction, citing the DNA evidence as well as the failure of Alexander's trial defense attorney to provide an adequate legal defense. "The most reasonable conclusion is that the hairs originate from the man who repeatedly raped B.N. from behind, on the floor in the very location where these hairs were collected," the petition said.
On January 30, 2018, Alexander's conviction was vacated. Judge June Berry Darensburg dismissed the charge and ordered Alexander released after spending nearly 38 years in prison.
Innocence Project lawyers Barry Scheck and Vanessa Potkin expressed gratitude to the prosecution and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Department. "The DA's Office and the Sheriff's Office were very cooperative in trying to see what happened," Scheck said. "We're very appreciative of this."
Orleans Parish District Attorney Paul Connick Jr., said, "After an extensive investigation during the past two and a half years, I agreed with Mr. Alexander's post-conviction attorneys that the defense attorney during the daylong trial 37 years ago provided ineffective representation in violation of his constitutional rights."
In May 2019, Alexander filed a claim for compensation from the state of Louisiana. A judge in Jefferson Parish rejected his claim in July 2021, ruling that Alexander had not provided clear and convincing proof of his factual innocence. Alexander appealed. On June 21, 2023, a five-judge panel in Louisiana's Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled 4-1 that the judge used an erroneous standard in evaluating Alexander's claim and directed the trial court to award Alexander compensation. He was subsequently awarded $480,000.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 02-06-2018/ Last Update Date: 07-29-2024
Jarvis Ballard
In the early morning hours of January 10, 1998, a 60-year-old white woman was sexually assaulted and robbed in her home in Violet, Louisiana. In her first account to police, she said two Black men forced their way into her home, demanding that she show them the "safe." When she insisted there was no safe, both men raped her and threatened her with death. The men took stereo equipment and a television and fled.
Yolanda Ceaser, who lived next door to the victim, told police that at about 2 a.m. a young man she knew as "Lil Noon," knocked on her door asking to see Ceaser's 24-year-old son, Louis Ceaser Jr. She turned him away and watched as he went into the victim's house. Yolanda woke her son, who recognized the man as 20-year-old Ulysses Pierre. Yolanda called 911 and they watched as Pierre and another man brought items out of the victim's house and put them in the back seat of a car. Yolanda told police she thought a woman was in the car when it pulled away.
The victim told police that she was babysitting her 3 year-old grandson and thought the knock on her door at 2 a.m. was her son coming to pick up the boy. She said when she realized her son was not at the door, she tried to close it, but the two men forced their way in and demanded she reveal the location of a safe. She said she did not scream or attempt to violently resist when the men forced her into the bedroom because her grandson was asleep in the king-sized bed.
Hours later, police brought Pierre in for questioning. During an interrogation, Pierre first said that he acted alone. Pierre later said that because the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's detectives had a report that two men were involved, they refused to accept his statement. Pierre later said he was physically abused by the detectives and so he implicated 29-year-old Sidney Williams and 18-year-old Jarvis Ballard. Pierre later said he falsely implicated Ballard because he thought Ballard would never be convicted. In addition, Pierre disclosed the location of the items stolen from the victim's home.
When police arrived at that location, they recovered most of the stolen items. They also spotted Ballard nearby and arrested him. At the station, Ballard denied involvement in the crime. He would later testify that Sheriff's Detective Scott Davis kicked him in the testicles so hard that he would later require surgery. At that point, Ballard later said, he agreed to whatever Davis told him to say in a statement. Ballard signed the statement about an hour after he arrived at the station.
At the same time, the officers prepared two photographic lineups. Both were shown to the victim, who was in the station as well. The victim identified Ballard as the first of the two men who forced their way into her home. She identified Pierre as the second man inside. The victim said that Pierre raped her after Ballard told him to do so and that Ballard then raped her as well.
Later that day, police arrested Williams and brought him to the station. During questioning, Williams admitted that he and Pierre committed the crime, but he denied raping the victim. He said that Ballard "wasn't even there." Williams said that his girlfriend, 17-year-old Quandreka Ballard, who was Jarvis Ballard's sister, was in the car.
On January 21, 1998, Ballard, Pierre, and Williams were indicted on a charge of aggravated rape. Police by that time had arrested Quandreka and recovered a ring that had been yanked from the victim so hard that it lacerated her finger. Quandreka and the woman at whose residence the other stolen items were recovered were also charged and ultimately pled guilty.
On January 28, 1998, the police interviewed the victim, and she gave what would be the fourth statement about the crime. In her 911 call as well as two other subsequent interviews, the victim had said only two men were involved. The second and third interviews were never disclosed to Ballard's defense attorney. More than 20 years later, they would be key evidence supporting his exoneration.
In the third interview, detectives told the victim that three suspects were charged with the crime. "We have arrested three subjects in connection with the rape and burglary, you were able to identify two of the subjects," a detective said. The victim was then asked, "[D]o you feel that there could have been three assailants inside your residence at the time of assault?"
The victim replied, "Yes, it's entirely possible. I was face down on the bed during most of the sexual assault, and one of them kept leaving the room. And coming back into the room." She said nothing about anything that this third man did during the crime.
Prior to the trial, the prosecution offered all three defendants a chance to plead guilty to a lesser crime, but required that all three had to accept the offer. When Ballard refused, insisting he was innocent, the offer was withdrawn.
On July 19, 1999, Ballard and Pierre went to trial together in St. Bernard Parish District Court. The trial lasted three days and both men were convicted of aggravated rape.
The prosecution presented the testimony of Yolanda Ceaser and her son, Louis, who testified about seeing Pierre and another man taking property from the victim's home and putting it in a car. Louis testified that he saw three men coming to and from the house.
Louis also testified that he had given Ballard a ride home from a club in New Orleans not long before. Louis said that he got home about five minutes after dropping Ballard off and that he had been in bed for about 15 minutes when his mother woke him to report that Pierre had come to the front door.
The victim testified and identified Ballard as the first man through her front door and identified Pierre as the man who came in after Ballard. She said that Pierre raped her after Ballard ordered him to do so. She said Ballard was holding a pillow as if to smother her while she was raped. She also testified that there was a third person involved, but she did not see him. She said that a man with "a different voice" shouted at her "not to look at him" and then a pillowcase was pulled over her head. She said all three wore gloves.
For the first time, the victim said that the third man forced his penis into her mouth. And she told the jury that she had contracted gonorrhea as a result of the sexual assaults.
During cross-examination, Ballard's attorney asked her about her 911 call during which she said there were only two men involved. "What I said was I saw two," she replied. "I saw two at a time. I didn't see three at a time." She added that her report was "a very abbreviated version."
St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Detective Scott Davis read Ballard's statement to the jury. He denied physically abusing Ballard or coercing him in any way. The statement conflicted with the prosecution's evidence in some areas. Ballard said he and the others walked to the victim's house-there was no mention of a car or of Quandreka Ballard. He also said that no one wore gloves.
Ballard was quoted as saying that as he was raping the victim, he became afraid. "I didn't even finish, so I ran out of the house."
Julie Golden, a forensic analyst for ReliaGene Technologies, testified that she performed DNA tests on a rape kit and numerous items from the victim's house, including bed sheets, a pillowcase, a comforter, and underwear. She said she found sperm and compared DNA profiles obtained from the sperm to the DNA profiles of Ballard, Pierre, and Williams. Golden told the jury she found the profiles of Pierre and Williams, but not the profile of Ballard.
Pierre's statement was entered into evidence. It was not read to the jury after Ballard's attorney objected. However, Sgt. Albert Clavin, who took the statement, told the jury that at the end of the statement, when asked if he had anything to add, Pierre said, "No, I am just sorry for what I did."
Evidence was presented that items stolen from the victim's house had been recovered based on Pierre's admission about their location.
Detective Ray Whitfield was called as a defense witness. He testified that he took a statement from Williams during which Williams admitted that he and Pierre committed the crime.
Ballard's defense attorney, Kerry Cuccia asked, "And in fact, when you asked about Jarvis Ballard, he tells you on two occasions that Jarvis Ballard was not involved?"
"Yes," Whitfield said. "At this time he stated that Jarvis Ballard was not involved."
"And he does, of course, identify that Quandreka was outside in the car?" Cuccia asked.
"Yes, he does," Whitfield said.
During cross-examination by the prosecutor, Glenn Diaz, Whitfield said he had interviewed the victim twice. Asked if she said how many men were involved in the attack, Whitfield said, "Originally she said it was two subjects that entered her home, and about two weeks after the initial crime I re-interviewed her again and she stated she was now under the impression she felt three subjects were involved, that she recalls three distinct voices inside the residence."
Ballard's mother, Linda, testified that Louis Ceaser dropped Jarvis at home between 12:30 and 1 a.m. She said she had to get up to unlock the door to let him in. She said that her husband, James Haynes, got up to go to work as a truck driver at 3 a.m. She said she checked on Jarvis and he was there, but Quandreka was not home.
Haynes testified that he left the house at 1 a.m. for his truck-driving job-a statement that the prosecutor seized upon to discredit Ballard's mother's testimony about seeing Jarvis in bed at 3 a.m.
Jarvis Ballard testified that after he denied involvement in the crime, Davis kicked him in the testicles. "And after that, he said, 'What are you going to do?'" Ballard said. "He said, 'You want to give a voluntarily [sic] statement?' I said, 'No, man, I ain't done nothing. I can't give a statement for something I ain't done.'"
Did you ultimately give a statement?" Cuccia asked.
"After, I was scared," Ballard said. "I didn't know what he was going to do to me."
Ballard said, "I made parts of the statement from what they was telling me. So it is like they was telling me this and I was just agreeing so they would leave me alone and let me go to jail. They didn't mention in this statement that I said: 'You got what you want, bring me to jail. I guess the truth will come out when I go to trial.'"
"What was your state of mind when you gave the statement?" Cuccia asked.
"I was scared," Ballard said. "I really, you know, I was scared. I never been in trouble with the law."
Cuccia introduced hospital records showing that not long after he was charged, Ballard underwent a three-hour surgery to repair a hernia. The prosecutor attempted to undercut that evidence by noting that the records failed to say a police officer had kicked him.
Ballard insisted that he had in fact reported "that I was beat up by a deputy."
"Do you have a doctor here to tell me that or a witness?" the prosecutor asked.
"Who?" Ballard said. "A doctor? There ain't no doctor here, but all this paper right here."
As the trial neared conclusion, Pierre's defense attorney asked for a meeting with the trial judge. He explained that he wanted to put on the record that Pierre wanted to testify, even though the lawyer had advised him against taking the witness stand. However, back in the courtroom, when the defense lawyer said he was calling Pierre to the witness stand, Pierre said, "No, I can't do it."
In rebuttal, the prosecutor presented the record showing that Yolanda Ceaser's 911 call came in at 2:55 a.m. In addition, Davis was recalled and denied that he kicked Ballard.
During closing arguments, the prosecutor told the jury that the reason Ballard's DNA was not found at the scene was because he did not ejaculate. He pointed to the portion of Ballard's statement where he said he raped the victim, but did not "finish."
On July 21, 1999, after less than four hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Ballard and Pierre of aggravated rape. The following day, in a separate trial, a jury convicted Williams of aggravated rape. All three were sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In July 2001, the Louisiana Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the convictions and sentences. In September 2002, the Louisiana Supreme Court denied further appeal.
Over the ensuing years, Ballard filed state post-conviction petitions acting as his own lawyer. Those were denied. He filed a federal petition for habeas corpus in 2005 and that was denied as well.
In March 2017, Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) took on Ballard's case and filed an application for a writ challenging Ballard's conviction. Subsequently, IPNO attorneys Charell Arnold and Richard Davis filed supplements in April and November 2018.
The evidence showed that Ballard was first represented by a public defender. But in 1999, his mother hired Cuccia to handle what would be his first and only criminal trial in St. Bernard Parish. Cuccia assumed that the file the public defender gave him included all prosecution evidence. In fact, it did not, and even though the St. Bernard Parish District Attorney had an open file policy, Cuccia did not check out the file. Even so, the prosecution did not inform him that there were two police reports in the file in which the victim repeated her 911 call report that only two men were involved.
The file also contained a statement from Quandreka Ballard describing how she and Williams picked up Pierre and went to the victim's house. She sat in the car while Williams and Pierre went into the house. "Ulysses kept coming to the car with property," she said. "I was crying because I knew they were stealing the stuff and I told Sidney to bring him home, but he wouldn't. Ulysses told me he raped the lady and Sidney also told me Ulysses raped her. Sidney told me he didn't rape her, but Ulysses told me he tied her up and raped her."
In addition, Quandreka said that Williams borrowed the car from Farrell Anderson, picked her up at a hotel, and they picked up Pierre before driving to the victim's home.
The application for a writ included an affidavit signed by Pierre in 2017 recanting his statement to police that Ballard was involved. "I told the officers I committed the crime, but I lied and told them it was me alone," the statement said. "They hit me and threatened me, so I lied and told the police Jarvis Ballard was there even though he wasn't involved. When the police were questioning me, I just panicked. I thought if Jarvis was picked up, they couldn't do anything to him because he wasn't guilty."
Pierre's mother, Dale, gave a statement saying that when Ballard refused to accept the plea agreement, the prosecutor asked her to try to convince Ballard to take the deal. She also said that she overheard a conversation between the prosecutor and Pierre during which Pierre asserted that Ballard was not involved. IPNO's filing noted that the prosecutor not only did not disclose that statement to the defense but introduced Pierre's statement implicating Ballard as well.
Sabrika Lewis said in an affidavit that she saw Ballard at a party several hours before the attack, which supported Ballard's statement when he was arrested. In addition, Tyrus Duplesses gave a statement that he was in the parish jail when Ballard came in. Ballard was doubled over in pain and said he had been beaten by police.
Farrel Anderson, whose car Williams used on the night of the crime, gave a statement that when he loaned the car to Williams, Ballard was not present.
In addition, IPNO discovered that the victim's grandson had given a statement that said only two men were involved. That statement was not disclosed to the defense.
Moreover, IPNO had obtained DNA testing of more items of evidence that had never been tested. Ballard's DNA was not found.
Four jurors told the IPNO that they did not understand that they could return separate verdicts for Pierre and Ballard. They believed that if they voted to convict one defendant, they had to convict both. An alternate juror admitted improperly taking part in the jury's deliberations.
The police reports and statements could have been used to impeach the prosecution's case, the IPNO lawyers said.
In addition, in 2018, Ballard took a polygraph examination and was determined to be truthful when he denied involvement in the crime.
IPNO filed reports from a psychologist who said that Ballard, due to his learning disability, was unusually vulnerable to police pressure and had an increased "risk of a coerced and/false confession." Another psychologist reviewed the case and concluded there were "a significant number of factors" that "likely affected" the victim's misidentification of Ballard.
Cuccia provided an affidavit saying he did not hire an investigator or seek out experts on mistaken witness identification or false confessions. He also said he did not interview multiple potential witnesses, including Quandreka Ballard and Farrel Anderson.
The prosecution opposed the motion, arguing that the new evidence was either already addressed at trial or was not new and thus the application for a writ was filed too late.
Without holding a hearing, the trial court denied the writ application, save for the issue of whether an alternate juror took part in deliberations. All of the other issues were procedurally barred because the application was filed too late or the issues had been addressed at trial.
IPNO appealed and on July 21, 2021, the Louisiana Court of Appeal for the Fourth Circuit reversed the ruling and remanded the case back for a hearing.
The appeals court noted that the trial court, in dismissing the writ application, "clearly indicates that it only considered those claims acknowledged and addressed by the State in its written opposition and, moreover, only as the claims were characterized by the State, not as they were raised by the [defense]." "This was clear error," the appeals court declared.
On August 2, 2021, St. Bernard Parish District Attorney Perry Nicosia dismissed the case and Ballard was freed.
"DNA evidence, witnesses recanting their prior statements and polygraph testing all supported the 'actual innocence' claims of Jarvis Ballard," Nicosia said in a statement. "Our office will always protect the public and prove guilt when evidence of guilt exists; however, when proof of innocence is shown I will follow through with administering justice and correcting past errors."
In August 2022, Ballard filed a civil-rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana against the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office, seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-21-2021/ Last Update Date: 09-29-2022
Elvis Brooks
At 11 p.m. on July 1, 1977, two men robbed the Welcome Inn Bar in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana, shooting 58-year-old Cecil Lloyd to death during the robbery.
The bar's owner, Ida Mae Caruso, told police that two Black men came to the bar's door and asked for two beers to go. When Caruso handed the cans to the men, they pushed their way inside, each holding either a sawed-off shotgun or rifle. The taller man went behind the bar and took money from the register. The shorter man threatened the patrons and demanded their wallets and purses.
Along with Caruso, customers Catherine Cipriano, Milton Shows and Joseph Noto gave officers with the New Orleans Police Department descriptions of the robbers. Shows described the shorter man as in his mid-20s, and around 5'4" tall. Noto said this man was about 30 years old, 5'6" tall, medium complexion with short hair and wearing "a tan shirt with a floral design on the back." Cipriano said the shorter man was 25 to 29 years old, with a thin build, and wearing gold cut-off pants and a white T-shirt. Caruso described this robber as in his 20s, about 5'5" tall, with a close haircut, wearing dark pants and a light, champagne-colored shirt with figures. In addition, Caruso said she recognized the shorter robber from the neighborhood.
During the investigation, police collected fingerprint samples from the beer cans and from other items that the robbers touched.
About a week after the robbery-murder, police officers working the case remembered a potential suspect in the neighborhood who they said resembled the description of the shorter robber. His name was Elvis Brooks. He was 19 years old and worked at Brennan's Restaurant. Officers placed a mugshot of Brooks in a six-pack photo array and showed it to Caruso, Cipriano and Noto, on July 7, 1977. Each identified Brooks as being the shorter robber who shot Lloyd to death.
Police arrested Brooks on July 19, 1977. He was charged with first-degree murder and three counts of armed robbery.
Brooks went to trial on September 22, 1977, in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, represented by Alvin Taylor, a friend of the Brooks family. Shows did not testify, but Caruso, Cipriano, and Noto each identified Brooks as the shorter robber at the Welcome Inn. Their testimony differed from their statements to police. All three testified that the shorter robber wore a white V-neck T-shirt and dark pants. In addition, Noto and Caruso each testified that they had told police that the shorter robber had a mole or similar mark on his forehead. (Brooks had a black dot tattooed on his forehead between his eyes. He got the tattoo in 1975, a year after the mugshot used in the photo array was taken.)
Brooks presented a robust alibi defense. Twelve witnesses, many of them family members, testified that Brooks was at home for a Fourth of July get together at the time of the robbery.
Covering the trial, a reporter for theTimes-Picayunewrote: "Try as he might, prosecutor Phil Boudousque could uncover few discrepancies in the testimony of the witnesses. Every witness said Brooks had been home, and every witness said his hair had been in braids - not in the short Afro hairstyle the barroom witnesses said he was wearing."
In his cross-examinations, Boudousque kept returning to the food consumed at the family gathering, asking several witnesses about their consumption of alcohol and watermelon at the event.
Brooks testified and said that he left Brennan's on July 1 at about 5:45 p.m. and didn't leave his house until he went back to work on July 2. He presented records from the restaurant showing his hours on those days. He said he didn't rob the Welcome Inn. "I have never been inside the place," he said. "In fact, I don't go in white barrooms because I know trouble might kick off."
After a one-day trial, the all-white jury convicted Brooks the same day of first-degree murder and three counts of armed robbery. A week later, Brooks received a sentence of life without parole for the murder conviction and concurrent sentences of 50 years for each of the armed robbery convictions. He was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
Following his conviction, Brooks filed a direct appeal, represented by an attorney with the Orleans Indigent Defender Program. The Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 1980. For the next 39 years, Brooks, assisted by inmates at the Angola State Prison complex, filed more than 20 unsuccessful motions seeking to get his conviction overturned, challenging everything from the identifications made by the witnesses to the jury instructions.
On January 4, 2019, Brooks filed a new motion for post-conviction relief. He was now represented by Innocence Project New Orleans. The organization's research and records requests had turned up several key pieces of evidence.
First, a note in the prosecutor's file said that Brooks was not the source of any fingerprints found on the beer cans. Second, the testimony given by two of the witnesses about the white T-shirt was at odds with their statements to police and with the bulletin released by the police that mentioned a "tan short shirt." Third, there was also no evidence in the police files that the witnesses had mentioned the marking on Brooks's forehead prior to trial. This appeared to contradict their testimony.
In addition, The Welcome Inn robbers had likely committed another robbery that same night, an hour earlier and a block away. The victims of that robbery gave similar descriptions of the two men to police, and they did not identify Brooks as one of the robbers.
The motion said that prosecutors had failed to turn over the fingerprint evidence, which was exculpatory. Prosecutors pushed back, stating there was no proof this information wasn't given to Taylor, who had died in 2003. In October 2019, they offered a deal to Brooks and his attorneys. The state would amend the murder charge to manslaughter, and Brooks would be released on time served if he pled guilty. He accepted the deal on October 15, 2019, and was released from prison the next day. He moved to Alexandria, Louisiana, and took a job as a dishwasher.
Leon Cannizzaro, the Orleans Parish District Attorney at the time, said the deal was fair and that Brooks's conviction was just and proper.
"If he and his attorneys truly believed in his innocence, they could have pursued post-conviction claims," he told theWashington Post."Notably, they did not."
In 2021, Jason Williams took office as the Orleans Parish District Attorney, replacing Cannizzaro.
Attorneys and investigators representing Brooks made another request for records related to his case. They discovered a memo written on Oct 2, 2019, that summarized a meeting that day with Boudousque and prosecutors about the fingerprint evidence in the Brooks case. In the memo, Boudousque said he didn't believe he turned over the fingerprint evidence. He said that he didn't think the evidence was exculpatory, because there was a question - based in part on a change to the police report after Brooks was arrested and his fingerprints were excluded as a contributor - about whether one or both robbers touched the beer cans. The memo said, in part:"To Boudousque, the evidence was not exculpatory, and if he had believed it to be then he would have turned it over. Boudousque cannot say whether or not he turned it over, but he believes the defense would have likely tried using it if he had, and so it is likelier that he did not turn it over."
Harry Daniels, Brooks's attorney, filed a motion on December 9, 2021, asking the court to allow Brooks to withdraw his 2019 guilty plea, because it was made without full knowledge of the facts in the case.
"When the prior District Attorney's Administration learned that the trial prosecutor had failed to turn over this fingerprint evidence, they offered Mr. Brooks the chance to leave prison alive, but never revealed the wrongdoing they had uncovered," the motion said. "Instead, Mr. Brooks was forced to make an impossible choice between clearing his name or living his life outside the gates of Angola prison. Mr. Brooks' guilty plea is constitutionally infirm due to the State's withholding and the coercive nature of his plea agreement and must be withdrawn."
Judge Nandi Campbell of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court granted the motion on April 28, 2022, and the state dismissed the charges that day.
- Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 01-17-2023 Last Update Date: 01-17-2023
Glenn Davis, Jr.
On August 3, 1992, 34-year-old Samuel George, an alleged crack dealer, was murdered by a shot fired from a passing car as he stood on a street corner in Westwego, Louisiana, a small town on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish.
Charged with the murder were Glenn Davis Jr., 19;Larry Delmore,23; andTerrence Meyers, 22.
They were prosecuted on the basis of the testimony of a single eyewitness, Norman Jackson, an admitted crack user with an extensive criminal record, who said Delmore fired the fatal shot while Meyers drove and Davis sat in the back seat.
Their first trial ended in a mistrial when Delmore and Davis were beaten outside the courthouse during a lunch break. The beating was unrelated to the murder. Judge Patrick McCabe ordered the mistrial when Delmore and Davis came back to court with puffy eyes from the beating.
During the second trial, Delmore was removed from the courtroom for cursing and shouting that he was innocent. He was returned to the trial shackled and his mouth covered with tape. The restraints were later removed and while the jury was deliberating, Delmore left the courthouse and went home. He surrendered three days later.
All three were then convicted of second degree murder on July 2, 1993 and sentenced to life in prison. Delmore received separate six month terms for leaving the courthouse and for his courtroom outburst.
In 2002, lawyers from Innocence Project New Orleans began investigating the case. By that time, Jackson, the eyewitness, had been dead after being stabbed five years earlier.
Innocence Project lawyers found evidence that had not been disclosed to lawyers for the defendants. Evidence included statements that another man, Derek "Blake" Richardson, had told people he was the killer, that Richardson drove a car that matched the description of the car seen driving away from the murder, and that other witnesses said Jackson was nowhere near the murder and could not have seen who killed the victim.
In October 2004, an appeals court ordered the state district court to hold a hearing and in February 2008, Judge Greg Guidry set aside Davis' conviction and ordered a new trial. The judge found that the evidence discovered by the Innocence Project was exculpatory and had been withheld. The court also ruled that attorney Anderson Council, who represented all three defendants at trial, had a conflict of interest because he had provided legal assistance to Richardson-the man alleged to be the true killer. (Richardson was shot to death in December 1993.)
Davis was released on bond. A month later, the convictions of Delmore and Meyers were set aside and they were released on bond. On September 24, 2010, the state dismissed the charges against all three defendants. In 2012, Davis, Delmore and Meyers each were awarded $330,000 in state compensation.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011/Last Update Date: 10-05-2022
Jerry Davis
On March 15, 2024, the New Orleans District Attorney's office dismissed the murder case against Jerry Davis, nearly 40 years after he was wrongly convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
Davis had been granted a new trial on July 26, 2023, based on evidence he and his legal team from Innocence Project New Orleans had uncovered showing that the prosecution had failed to disclose nearly three dozen pieces of evidence that either pointed to Davis's innocence or impeached the witnesses who had testified against him.
On August 10, 2023, Davis had been released on bond. He had spent 39 years, six months and 11 days in prison since a jury convicted him on January 31, 1984.
Davis was granted a new trial after a judge ruled that the lead prosecutor in his case, James "Jim" Williams, had failed to disclose evidence pointing to the two main witnesses against Davis-Allen Johnson and Phillip Ware-as the true perpetrators.
This was not the first case in which Williams was found to have done so. He withheld exculpatory evidence in three other wrongful convictions that ended in exoneration:Raymond Flanks, who was exonerated in 2022;John Thompson, who was exonerated in 2003; andCurtis Kyles, who was exonerated in 1998.
Williams was known for keeping a working model of an electric chair on his desk and putting photographs of the faces of the people he prosecuted in the chair. He had sought and obtained death sentences against Thompson and Kyles. He also sought death for Flanks and Davis, but juries had imposed life without parole instead.
The crime that sent Davis to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola for the slave plantation upon which it was built and one of America's most notorious prisons, occurred on May 6, 1983. That evening, Orleans police were called to a trailer park on Chef Menteur Highway after a report of a shooting. They found 58-year-old John Broussard, a veterinarian from Oceanside, Mississippi, with a gunshot wound. He was being tended to by his wife, Bette, a nurse.
The couple had come to New Orleans, Louisiana, to celebrate their 37th wedding anniversary by attending the city's annual jazz festival and were spending a night in their RV in the trailer park.
Bette told police that John was outside hooking the vehicle up to utilities when she heard him tell someone not to go inside the vehicle. Her first account said she heard a gunshot and then a man came inside, pushed her back, grabbed her purse, and left.
Two witnesses told police that after they heard the shots, they saw two men of about the same height run away from the trailer park.
Despite the efforts of his wife, Broussard died at the hospital. Before he died, he said that the man who shot him then went into the RV.
On June 21, 1983, Allen Johnson, who was awaiting sentencing for a burglary conviction, told police that Phillip Ware was involved in the shooting. The following day, police interviewed Ware and he implicated himself and 24-year-old Jerry Davis. According to Ware, Davis was the gunman. Ware said that he went inside the RV, grabbed Bette Broussard's purse and fled, but that he did not touch her.
A day earlier, Davis had been arrested on a marijuana possession charge and was still in jail. When police went back to speak to Johnson again, this time, he gave a different account. He said that Davis had admitted to him to being involved in the crime.
On July 7, 1983, Ware and Davis were indicted by an Orleans Parish grand jury on charges of capital murder. Ultimately, Ware agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter in return for testifying against Davis.
Davis went to trial in Orleans Parish District Court on January 30, 1984. The entire testimonial part of the transcript took up just 62 pages.
Unlike her initial statement to police, Bette Broussard testified that Ware came into the RV and took her purse without touching her. After he left, she said, she heard the gunshot. The initial statement had not been disclosed to the defense.
Johnson testified that "some weeks" after the murder, he gave Davis a ride and mentioned Ware. Johnson testified that Davis said that he and Ware "had pulled a robbery in a trailer park." According to Johnson, Davis said that he told Broussard not to move while Ware went inside to search the trailer. Johnson testified that Davis told him that "the man must've reached for him, and he shot him and they took off." Johnson testified that Davis talked like "what he did was like a joke."
Johnson also said that he waited for about two weeks because he "had to think about" it and then contacted the police. He admitted that he had one prior conviction for burglary from 1977. He also admitted that, after he had already implicated Davis, he was arrested for obscenity, but that this charge was to be dismissed in return for his testimony. He denied having other convictions, and he denied ever having "gone to the police with information before" or being known as a "snitch."
Johnson had told police in his statement that the murder weapon had been taken out of a woman's purse, which was in a pickup truck while she was getting gas at the Amoco station at Chef Menteur Highway and Dale Street.
Police had determined that a Beretta .25-caliber pistol, with a serial number matching the gun later identified as the murder weapon, was reported stolen from a woman's makeup bag from inside a purse that the woman had left in her truck as she went to buy gas at the station on Chef Menteur Highway between Reynes Street and Dale Street two weeks before Broussard was murdered. Two weeks after Johnson told police exactly how the murder weapon had been obtained prior to the murder, police recovered the murder weapon from 16-year-old Herman Bernard.
Detective Melvin Winins, the lead investigator, testified that the pistol was retrieved from Bernard. Williams asked, "Do you know how it is [that] Herman Bernard came into possession of this gun?"Detective Winins replied, "Yes, he got it from Jerry Davis."The defense objected to this testimony as impermissible hearsay and moved for a mistrial. The objection was overruled.
Ware testified that he had been charged with first-degree murder, but had pleaded guilty to manslaughter. When asked about his arrest, he testified that Detective Winins "came and he told me that he knew that I had participated in this crime, but he knew that Jerry was the gunman, that Jerry did the shooting. He asked me: What did I have to say? So, I told him that I'd give my statement."
Ware testified that, on the night of the crime, he was walking with Davis and they went into the campground. He testified that they approached the man he later learned was Broussard and Davis told him: "You look around in the trailer-you go and look around the trailer, and I'll occupy Mr. Broussard." Ware denied knowing that Davis had a gun. He admitted seeing Bette Broussard in the trailer, but said he "didn't strike her, or nothing." He said that he picked up her purse, then heard a shot as he exited the trailer and saw Davis running away.
Ware testified that no one else was there, that he did not shoot Broussard, and that Davis was the gunman. He testified that, when he asked Davis about it later, "[h]e just smiled, and shook his head. Ware testified that he and Davis emptied the pocketbook at McDonough Forty school and split $60.
Ware also testified that he did not have any other convictions. A firearms examiner testified that the Beretta .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol recovered by police was the murder weapon based on a comparison of the bullet removed from Broussard's body.
The defense presented no evidence.
In closing argument, Holly Taylor, who prosecuted the case with Williams, told the jury it was "very important" that Johnson did not "have interest" when he came forward. She added, "He has no interest at all. He has no open charges at this point."
Williams, in his closing argument, told the jury that Johnson "had enough gumption, enough fortitude to come forward, and to try to right a wrong." Williams added that there was no "reason put forward, or brought out by the defense why he would come here, or why he would go to the police earlier, and lie about what happened." Williams also said that at the time Johnson gave his first statement to Detective Winins, Johnson "was in no trouble. . . . he had not gotten into the trouble for which we are going to spring him for his testimony."
Williams told the jury that the purse had never been recovered. He also doubled down on the hearsay and told the jury: "Detective Winins told you where he got that gun from. And, I'm going to trust you to your memories to recall that. He told you exactly where that gun came from." The defense again moved unsuccessfully for a mistrial.
Williams argued that the accounts from Bette Broussard, Johnson, and Ware were each corroborated by the other. Williams argued that one way that the accounts corroborated each other was that Johnson "gave both of those names [Davis and Ware] prior to the arrest of either one of those people." Williams also pointed out Bette Broussard's testimony that Ware "didn't touch her" as part of the justification for reducing Ware's charge.
On January 31, 1984, the jury convicted Davis of capital murder. However, the jury declined to impose the death penalty. Davis was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Ware was later sentenced to five years in prison.
Davis's conviction was upheld on appeal.In 1994, Davis, through a public records request, was able to obtain the prosecution file. It contained numerous documents that had not been disclosed to the defense prior to the trial. These documents included the report of Bette Broussard that her husband was shot before the man came into the RV. This contradicted Ware's testimony and suggested that in fact Ware was the gunman. There was an FBI rap sheet for Ware, which suggested he had lied about having no prior convictions. There was a police report of a dying declaration from Broussard that he was shot by the man who entered the RV-indicating that the gunman was Ware.
Davis sought to vacate his conviction based on the evidence that had been withheld, but he was rejected. The trial judge ruled the evidence would not have changed the verdict.
Not long after Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) was founded in 2000, Davis sought their help. In 2021, IPNO began investigating the case. It filed more than 100 record requests and interviewed numerous witnesses.
In March 2023, IPNO attorney Richard Davis filed an application for post-conviction relief, citing nearly three dozen records that were never disclosed to the defense prior to Davis's trial. Some of the documents indicated that Johnson and Ware were the true perpetrators. Documents also showed that Johnson and Ware had lied in their testimony, most specifically by denying that they had other prior convictions. Some of the documents showed that Williams allowed Johnson and Ware to lie without correcting their testimony.
"Mr. Davis's trial was riddled with false evidence, including evidence that the trial prosecutors knew was false," the motion said.
"Williams presented Allen Johnson as a witness with one prior burglary conviction from 1977 and no incentives to assist police when he came forward," the motion said. "In fact, Mr. Johnson had four prior convictions, was awaiting sentencing in a 1983 burglary case, and sought and received sentencing benefits for coming forward. Mr. Williams knew Mr. Johnson's testimony was false. Within a week before trial, he drafted and circulated a memo that stated that Mr. Johnson had 'two burglary convictions' and 'a long criminal record,' so he was clearly familiar with Mr. Johnson's history."
The motion noted that Williams had presented Ware as a witness with no criminal history. "In fact, Mr. Ware had two prior convictions," the motion said. "Mr. Williams was aware of at least one of these convictions, as his file contains an FBI rap sheet with a handwritten notation... commonly used by prosecutors to refer to a guilty plea."
The motion said that Williams had "downplayed" Ware's culpability by presenting testimony from Ware and Bette Broussard that Ware did not strike her in "any way" while robbing her and never said anything to threaten her, even though Bette Broussard's first statement to police, as documented in the incident report, said that the perpetrator "demand[ed] her money and purse" and her signed statement said that the perpetrator "pushed her back." The incident report and signed statement were both in Williams's file.
IPNO's investigation had discovered that at the time of the crime, Johnson had been diagnosed as a violent schizophrenic. The prosecution did not disclose that Johnson had been convicted of burglary in March of 1983 and was awaiting sentencing when he volunteered information to the police on the Broussard homicide. The prosecution did not disclose that Johnson ultimately received no prison time for this case, his second burglary conviction, explicitly in exchange for his cooperation in the case against Davis and Ware.
The prosecution also did not disclose that the two witnesses who heard the gunshots and saw two men flee had described the fleeing men as about an inch apart in height. Johnson was 6 feet tall and Ware was 6 feet 1 inch tall. This evidence was relevant to the defense because Davis was 5 feet 6 inches tall.
The motion said that IPNO had interviewed Bernard, who said that the statement attributed to him was not signed by him. He also said he had stolen the gun from a man named Leroy Jackson to settle a debt, that Jackson knew that Bernard had the gun, and that Jackson told him "the police were looking for it and were going to throw him in jail for murder."
Bernard also told IPNO that he saw Jackson buy the gun from a man called Allen who was close friends with Ware. "The gun was a 25 and Leroy paid $25 for it," Bernard told IPNO.
"This means that Mr. Johnson knew exactly where and how the murder weapon was stolen before it was used to kill Mr. Broussard, [that he] sold it shortly before it was recovered by police two months after the crime, and likely told police that Mr. Jackson had the gun," the motion said.
The motion also noted that the IPNO had discovered that contrary to what Williams told the jury, Bette Broussard's purse had been recovered. It never, apparently, had been tested for fingerprints. The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office conceded that the evidence had not been disclosed to the defense prior to Davis's trial. However, the prosecution contended that the undisclosed evidence as well as the failure to correct false testimony by Ware and Johnson had no adverse impact on the case-Davis would have been convicted anyway.
Following a hearing, on July 26, 2023, Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Tracey Flemings-Davillier rejected the prosecution claims. She vacated Davis's first-degree murder conviction based on the failure by the prosecutors, Williams and Taylor, to disclose evidence favorable to Davis and their knowing use of false testimony.
IPNO attorney Davis said, "Once we strip away the legalese, the bottom line is that the trial prosecutors lied to the jury in order to try and have Jerry Davis killed and, although they failed in that, they still took away forty years of his life. Prosecutors should not have the unchecked power to take or ruin lives like this."
In July 2024, Davis filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the City of New Orleans, the New Orleans Police Department, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office, and several individuals, seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 04-21-2024 Last Update Date: 02-07-2025
Larry Delmore
On August 3, 1992, 34-year-old Samuel George, an alleged crack dealer, was murdered by a shot fired from a passing car as he stood on a street corner in Westwego, Louisiana, a small town on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Jefferson Parish.
Charged with the murder wereGlenn Davis Jr., 19; Larry Delmore, 23; andTerrence Meyers, 22.
They were prosecuted on the basis of the testimony of a single eyewitness, Norman Jackson, an admitted crack user with an extensive criminal record, who said Delmore fired the fatal shot while Meyers drove and Davis sat in the back seat.
Their first trial ended in a mistrial when Delmore and Davis were beaten outside the courthouse during a lunch break. The beating was unrelated to the murder. Judge Patrick McCabe ordered the mistrial when Delmore and Davis came back to court with puffy eyes from the beating.
During the second trial, Delmore was removed from the courtroom for cursing and shouting that he was innocent. He was returned to the trial shackled and his mouth covered with tape. The restraints were later removed and while the jury was deliberating, Delmore left the courthouse and went home. He surrendered three days later.
All three were then convicted of second degree murder on July 2, 1993 and sentenced to life in prison. Delmore received separate six-month terms for leaving the courthouse and for his courtroom outburst.
In 2002, lawyers from Innocence Project New Orleans began investigating the case. By that time Jackson, the eyewitness, had been dead after being stabbed five years earlier.
Innocence Project lawyers found evidence that had not been disclosed to lawyers for the defendants. Evidence included statements that another man, Derek "Blake" Richardson, had told people he was the killer, that Richardson drove a car that matched the description of the car seen driving away from the murder, and that other witnesses said Jackson was nowhere near the murder and could not have seen who killed the victim.
In October 2004, an appeals court ordered the state district court to hold a hearing and in February 2008, Judge Greg Guidry set aside Davis' conviction and ordered a new trial. The judge found that the evidence discovered by the Innocence Project was exculpatory and had been withheld. The court also ruled that attorney Anderson Council, who represented all three defendants at trial, had a conflict of interest because he had provided legal assistance to Richardson-the man alleged to be the true killer. (Richardson was shot to death in December 1993.)
Davis was released on bond. A month later, the convictions of Delmore and Meyers were set aside and they were released on bond. On September 24, 2010, the state dismissed the charges against all three defendants. In 2012, Davis, Delmore and Meyers each were awarded $330,000 in state compensation.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011 Last Update Date: 10-05-2022
Cedric Dent
At about 10 p.m. on September 2, 1997, 19-year-old Anthony Melton and his cousin, Jerry Hamilton, were walking through a vacant lot near the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans, Louisiana when Melton was fatally shot in the head from behind.
Hamilton, who was 18 years old, told the first police officers on the scene that the gunman was short, brown-skinned, and had short hair. He said he heard a shot, ran toward the housing project, then turned around and saw the gunman pointing a pistol at him.
This was the first of six times that Hamilton would give an account of that night and every account was different. Four of those accounts were never disclosed by the police and prosecution. Ultimately, Hamilton identified 22-year-old Cedric Dent as the gunman. He pointed to Dent in a photographic array and identified him at trial.
On May 18, 1999, a jury in Orleans Parish District Court convicted Dent of second-degree murder. Dent was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In none of Hamilton's descriptions did he mention that the shooter had gold teeth, a mustache, or a flattop haircut-all of which Dent had. While Hamilton maintained the shooter was about 5 feet 6 inches tall, Dent was 5 feet 8 inches tall.
In August 2022, more than 23 years later, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office filed a motion to vacate the conviction. The motion was granted, and Dent was released.
His release concluded a long legal battle waged first by Dent from prison, acting without a lawyer, and later by Meredith Angelson, an attorney with Innocence Project New Orleans, and Colin Reingold, an attorney with The Promise of Justice Initiative.
In May 2022, Angelson and Reingold filed a petition seeking to vacate Dent's conviction. The petition outlined the arc of how Hamilton's ability to identify the gunman had evolved.
In his first account of the shooting, Hamilton said that he and Melton had left the Jackson Market and were walking through the vacant lot next to the housing project, one of the oldest and more notorious housing projects in New Orleans history. Located in the lower Garden District, the project was where Sister Helen Prejean moved in 1982 to live and work with poor people. While there, she began corresponding with Patrick Sonnier, whose execution inspired her book and the film "Dead Man Walking." One year after Melton was killed, the project was demolished and replaced with mixed income housing.
About an hour after the shooting, Hamilton spoke to a detective and said the gunman was "a black male with a small head, buck eyes, short about 5'6," thin build with short hair." He said the gunman wore a white t-shirt. He did not describe any pants. Hamilton said the gunman had been in front of him and Melton while they were in line to pay for their purchases at the market.
He said the gunman went to the side of the building when Hamilton left the store. Hamilton said that when he ran, it was only "two steps." When he looked back, he saw the gunman "about seven feet behind Anthony and pointing a gun at me." The gunman then fled. Hamilton was unable to say which hand the gun was in or describe it.
On November 10, 1997, Hamilton for the first time mentioned, during a conversation with a prosecutor, that he had gone to another store while Melton stood in line to pay for drinks at the Market and that when he returned Melton had just finished paying. Rather than saying that the shooter was in the line ahead of them, Hamilton said the shooter "already had his stuff."
Although he told the prosecutor that he saw the gunman at the store, Hamilton said he himself was at the store for only a few seconds before he and Melton left to walk home. In this conversation, instead of saying he ran, he said he jumped off his bike when the shot was fired and looked back to see the shooter pointing a gun at him. For the first time, Hamilton said the gun was black, though he couldn't tell if it was a revolver or a semi-automatic pistol.
On November 13, 1997, Hamilton testified before the grand jury that indicted Dent. In this testimony, Hamilton said he left the market to buy bread and returned to meet Melton in the market. He now said that he did not see the gunman until the gunman was standing at the side of the building between the store and a parking lot. When he heard the gunshot, Hamilton said, "I tried to run, but I turned around" and the gunman was only a "[c]ouple of feet" away.
At first, Hamilton said he saw the gunman's face because a light was shining toward the gunman-although there was no such light at the scene. Asked a second time if he had been able to see the shooter's face, Hamilton replied, "Yeah...I got a good look at him."
None of those statements-two statements to police, his statement to a prosecutor, and the statement to the grand jury-were disclosed to Dent's defense lawyers prior to his trial, according to the post-conviction petition. "In a trial that hinged on the reliability of Mr. Hamilton's testimony and his ability to accurately identify the shooter, his testimony about what happened that night went unimpeached," the petition said.
On September 13, 1997, Dent voluntarily went to police after learning that police were looking for him. Dent denied involvement in the crime and said he had been at the Belle Promenade shopping mall in Marrero, Louisiana in a movie theater watching the film "Hoodlum." Hamilton identified Dent as the gunman in a lineup.
In June 1998, during a hearing on a motion to suppress Hamilton's identification, Hamilton gave another version of what he observed. He said he first noticed the gunman outside the store by a window. He said that when he came back to the market, Melton "was coming out of the line...he was getting his stuff." And for the first time, Hamilton said that although there were numerous people hanging outside the market, he noticed the gunman "following us, I noticed that much...What really made me notice him was he kept looking at me."
Hamilton was certain that he did not run away. When he heard the shot, "I jumped off my bike and turned around," he said. In this account, the gunman was 10 feet away and pointing a gun at him.
A jury was selected on May 17, 1999, and the trial was over on May 18-it lasted two hours. The lead detective, Michael Buras, testified that there was "no light at all" at the location where Melton's body was found, suggesting that it would have been difficult, if not impossible to see the gunman.
Hamilton now said that when he came back to the market, the shooter was in line to make a purchase. And he said that when he and Melton walked past the shooter to leave, the gunman was "just looking at me and I am looking back...just kind of staring each other down." He said the gunman was "looking at me funny."
He said that as he and Melton walked away, "I kept turning around and I saw him behind us." And for the first time, Hamilton said that he and the gunman stared at each other for "like about ten seconds" before the gunman fled.
Dent's defense lawyer presented no evidence and did not attempt to verify Dent's claim that he had been at the movie theater at the time of the crime. He also had not cross-examined Hamilton as to any prior version of events Hamilton had given. No physical evidence connected Dent to the crime. After a two-hour trial and three hours of jury deliberation, Dent was convicted.
The petition asserted that Detective Buras had failed to disclose the existence of another eyewitness. Notes of a conversation Buras had with a witness named Rodney, which were discovered years after the trial, showed that Rodney said he saw a man 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighing 130 to 140 pounds, with a brown complexion, and wearing a white shirt with a design on the front. Rodney said the person followed Melton from the store to the lot where Melton was shot. Rodney said the shooter had a blue steel handgun in his right hand. Like Hamilton, Rodney did not mention gold teeth, a mustache, or a flattop haircut. When Dent turned himself in at the police station, his weight was noted as 160 pounds.
At trial, Buras falsely testified that Hamilton was the only witness. The petition noted, "Erased completely from narrative of the case, Rodney was not called to testify because no one knew who he was except Detective Buras, and Detective Buras had not asked him whether the man he saw was Cedric Dent or someone else."
The petition also accused Buras of manipulating police reports that described how Dent came to be a suspect in the case. Although Buras "had no leads on the shooter," on September 4-two days after the shooting-Buras ran Dent's name through a computer system to get his criminal background. At that time, Dent had some traffic violations and a minor non-violent crime conviction. According to the petition, the information erroneously indicated that Dent lived at 701 St. Mary Street.
The petition said that Buras then spoke with Valirey Melton, who was Melton's mother. According to Buras's notes-which had not been previously disclosed-she told Buras that "concerned citizens told her that they know who shot her son." The notes said she told Buras that "C.D."-apparently referring to Cedric Dent-killed him after an argument at the market.
However, the petition said, Buras's report said that he first got Dent's name from Melton's mother, even though he had already run Dent's name through the computer. The report also said that Melton's mother said the information came from a "female witness who did not want to be involved." According to Buras's report, this witness saw Dent cut in line in front of Melton in the market. This witness claimed to know Dent and that he lived at 701 St. Mary Street, which was false.
Dent's conviction had been upheld in 2001 by the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He had filed two post-conviction petitions in the next three years, but both were dismissed. In 2005, Dent had filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which was denied in 2006.
Along the way, Dent had been able to obtain some of the undisclosed records by filing a public records request for the District Attorney's file on the case. In 2009, working without a lawyer, he filed another petition for post-conviction release. However, that motion never made it to a courtroom and went unanswered for years.
In 2020, his legal team filed another records request with the prosecution and the resulting disclosure amounted to more than 1,000 pages of records, including the notes of Hamilton's conversation with a prosecutor and Hamilton's grand jury testimony. Records were requested from the New Orleans police department, which resulted in the disclosure of 50 more pages of records, which did not include Detective Buras's handwritten notes. When the legal team asked to review the homicide file in person, police said the file could not be found. After a subpoena was issued, however, the file was located, and in it were Buras's notes about Rodney, the undisclosed second eyewitness, as well as his notes that showed how he had manipulated his report to indicate that Melton's mother was the initial source pointing to Dent, the petition said.
The petition said that Buras had eliminated Rodney and attributed portions of Rodney's statement to Hamilton "in an attempt to make Mr. Hamilton's identification look more reliable."
The petition noted that the legal team had located a man named Rodney who was working the night shift at the market at the time of the shooting. Rodney no longer had any memory of the circumstances of that night. However, had Buras made a record of him, Dent's defense could have located Rodney at a time when his memory was clear, the petition noted.
The petition also said that Buras's obfuscation of his conversation with Melton's mother meant that Dent's attorney was "blocked from several powerful avenues of impeachment of the officer who had martialed the evidence that Dent had anything to do with this crime. Armed with full knowledge of the inconsistencies and timeline of contradictions that existed between Detective Buras's report and the underlying documents, adequate counsel could have thoroughly undermined the integrity and thoroughness of Buras's investigation."
The defense could have "made clear to the jury that the evidence against Mr. Dent was so thin that the lead officer felt the need to fabricate more to make him look guilty when he was not," the petition said.
The petition also accused the prosecution of allowing Hamilton to testify falsely, noting that at trial, "the prosecutor was aware of at least four versions of the story Hamilton had told about the night of the murder." When Hamilton said he saw the shooter was in line when he returned to the market, "the prosecutor knew or should have known that [Hamilton] had said at least three times before, including under oath, that this was not the case," the petition said.
Dent also sought relief on the ground that he had been convicted by a non-unanimous jury. The vote to convict Dent was 10 to 2. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled non-unanimous verdicts were unconstitutional.
On August 8, 2022, the Civil Rights Division of the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office filed a motion to vacate Dent's conviction. The motion was based primarily on the prosecution's claim that Dent did not get a fair trial because his defense lawyer failed to investigate Dent's alibi claim and present evidence to support that claim, and because the defense lawyer failed to adequately cross-examine witnesses about the discrepancy between the descriptions of the gunman and Dent's appearance.
The motion to vacate was granted, the case was dismissed, and Dent was released.
The prosecution released a statement saying: "After a thorough review of Mr. Dent's case, our office concluded that-like many convictions decided by non-unanimous jury-his guilty verdict stemmed from a trial that was unfair precisely because one of the twelve jurors had voted to acquit and because of constitutionally ineffective assistance from his defense attorney. The legal system failed Mr. Dent, and just as significantly, failed the victim of this crime and his family."
Dent's attorney Angelson said, "Cedric Dent is a victim of the failures of every system that was put in place to protect his rights as a person accused of a crime-a police department that did the bare minimum to investigate a serious crime; lawyers that didn't have the resources or the wherewithal to investigate his case; and a district attorney's office that concealed evidence that should have been turned over and would have helped Mr. Dent get the not guilty verdict he deserved at trial." Dent subsequently filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking compensation.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-16-2022 Last Update Date: 09-14-2023
Calvin Duncan
Just after 11:30 p.m. on August 7, 1981, 23-year-old David Yeager was shot to death during a robbery in the Trem neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Yeager's girlfriend, 15-year-old Kristi Emberling, told police that two young Black men came up to her and Yeager while they were waiting for the bus. They asked the couple if they wanted to buy some marijuana. Yeager and Emberling said no. One of the men then pulled out a gun.
Yeager fought with that man. Emberling heard shots, and Yeager fell to the ground. She saw one of the men go through Yeager's pockets and fish out his wallet. The robbers then ran away.
In her first statement to police, Emberling said both men were between 15-25 years old. One was about 5' 10" tall and stocky, with a light complexion. The second she described as about 5' 6" tall, with a thin build and a darker complexion. Several other witnesses saw the robbery but were unable to give the police detailed descriptions.
Detective Marco Demma of the New Orleans Police Department took a second statement from Emberling a week later, on August 13, 1981. She said that the taller, stockier man had the gun and shot Yeager.
She described the gunman to Demma. "He was black, he had a mustache like he didn't shave ina week or two. He had like a knit winter cap, a leather or vinyl jacket, and a pair of blue jeans. He could have been 5' 8" tall, stocky, 185 or 190 pounds." In her initial description, Emberling had said this man wore a sun visor, not a knit hat.
The second man, Emberling said, was between 125 or 130 pounds, wearing a plaid long-sleeve shirt, with a short afro. "He was tall and skinny, about 5' 9" tall, and was wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes."
The investigation ran cold for several months. On February 15, 1982, the police department highlighted the case through its Crime Stoppers program. Three days later, a man called the Crime Stoppers hotline, said he was interested in the $1,000 award, and said that 18-year-old Calvin Duncan was the "perpetrator."
Demma located a mugshot of Duncan from a juvenile arrest that was four years old. He prepared a photo array and showed it to Emberling on March 7, 1982. Demma would write in his report that after viewing the photos, Emberling selected Duncan and said "This is the one who shot David."
He asked her if she was sure. According to the report, Emberling hesitated and said she wasn't sure and that she was scared. Demma and his partner left the house, but returned about an hour later after Emberling called the officers and said she was positive in her identification. On March 8, 1982, an arrest warrant was issued for Duncan.
On July 23, 1982, Crime Stoppers received a second tip. According to a police memo, a female caller said that she had received a letter from Duncan, who was working for the Job Corps in Clackamas County, Oregon, and using the name Calvin Jones.
On August 6, 1982, Lt. Roy Reed and Detective Loren Peterson of the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office arrested Duncan at the Job Corps center in the town of Estacada. During an initial interview, according to a report prepared by Reed, Duncan said he had no knowledge of the murder. Reed told him that a woman had witnessed the shooting. Duncan indicated he knew the witness was white. Reed would write that this was "noteworthy." Duncan said he first heard about the crime in February 1982 after the Crime Stoppers report and that he had hitchhiked out west to join the Job Corps, learn a trade, stay out of trouble, and save some money to hire a good attorney if he was later arrested.
Ten days later, as he was awaiting extradition to Louisiana, Duncan gave a second statement to Reed and Peterson. According to Reed's report, Duncan said the witness wouldn't be able to identify him. Reed lied to Duncan and said that he had been identified in part based on his prominent gold front teeth. Duncan said everybody in New Orleans had gold teeth, and he had his for at least two years. According to Reed's report, Duncan said he was afraid he would not get a fair trial in Louisiana.
Reed also returned to how Duncan knew the witness was a white woman. Reed wrote, "Duncan stated that it had to be a white woman or else they wouldn't have kept working on the case so long."
Demma and his partner, Detective Donald Curole, flew out to Oregon, on August 23, 1982, to escort Duncan back to New Orleans. They interviewed him at the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office.
Duncan repeated much of what he told Reed and Peterson. He said he had left New Orleans in February 1982 after learning he was a suspect in the shooting. The detectives challenged him on his timing, noting that the arrest warrant wasn't issued until March. Demma's report on the interview also highlighted Duncan's apparent knowledge of the murder. "Calvin Duncan again mentioned the fact about the victim being white and the witness being a female, without either of the detectives mentioning it," Demma wrote.Duncan was charged with first-degree murder.
On October 8, 1982, Duncan's attorney filed a request for the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office to provide any exculpatory evidence in the case. A month later, Leon Cannizzaro, then an assistant district attorney, responded. "The state has no exculpatory evidence," he wrote.
On August 15, 1983, Reed pled guilty in federal court to a single count of wiretapping and received five years on probation. According to a sentencing statement, Reed illegally installed a transmitter on the phone of a Clackamas County Commissioner whom some other officials believed was corrupt. Reed said that Peterson was present during early discussions on how to surveil the commissioner but did not know or take part in the installation of the eavesdropping device.
On February 2, 1984, an assistant prosecutor named Bruce Whittaker wrote his boss a memo about the problems with the Duncan case and recommended that prosecutors try to cut a deal and get Duncan to plead guilty to second-degree murder.
Whitaker noted the tentativeness of Emberling's initial identification. "Although she states the tentativeness was due to her understandable fear, the fact remains that the identification was seriously damaged for trial," Whittaker wrote. "Reed's inextricable involvement in all statements and his subsequent conviction would present serious problems in a jury trial," Whittaker wrote. "In response to a defense discovery request, the State informed the defense that none of its witnesses had a conviction record. In light of our continuing duty, such answer is no longer sufficient."
Duncan's trial in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court began in January 1985. He was represented by an attorney appointed through the Orleans Indigent Defenders Program. Prior to the trial's start, the attorney asked Judge Frank Shea to authorize funds to secure the testimony of an expert on mistaken witness identification. Judge Shea declined the request. "[If] you think every time I have a murder case I am going to have this expert come down because of the identification question, you are in the wrong court," he said.
Emberling was the state's main witness. She testified that Duncan was the gunman who shot and killed Yeager. Duncan was neither light-skinned nor stocky, as Emberling had told the police. Lacking the police reports, Duncan's attorney was unable to question Emberling on these inconsistencies in her descriptions. In her testimony, Emberling said that Duncan appeared to have "lost a lot of weight" since the robbery. She also testified that she had not noticed the gunman having any gold teeth.
Demma testified that Emberling had never hesitated in her identification of Duncan.
He also testified that Duncan had knowledge of the race of the victim and the eyewitness, and that these were facts only a person involved with the crime would have known. Demma testified that he didn't give the Oregon officers any information that identified the race of Emberling or Yeager. In addition, Demma testified falsely that the first caller to the Crime Stoppers hotline hadn't expressed interest in a reward.
Reed, now a convicted felon, did not testify, and his role in the investigation was minimized. Demma testified that Peterson was his principal contact in Clackamas County. Peterson testified that he knew nothing about the race or gender of the victims when he and Reed first interviewed Duncan.
Duncan testified and denied any involvement. He testified that Emberling was mistaken, noting that she had not mentioned any gold teeth in her description. Duncan testified he had gotten his gold teeth around 1979. A cousin also testified in support of that account.
Duncan testified that he had left New Orleans in late January 1982 and lived with a relative in Los Angeles before moving to Oregon in April. Duncan denied telling the Oregon officers any particulars of the murder. He testified that he knew some details of the crime before his arrest because his aunt in New Orleans had telephoned and written to him, telling him about a television broadcast that said he was wanted as a suspect in the murder.
In addition, Duncan testified that on the night of August 7, 1981, he was painting his aunt's house, because it was his cousin's birthday the next day. The aunt and her children testified about these events, but the cousin did not testify about the actual date of his birthday, allowing prosecutors to cast doubt on this alibi. The aunt also testified and corroborated Duncan's testimony about their communication when he was in California and Oregon.
During closing arguments, the state said Emberling had been strong and consistent in her identification of Duncan. The prosecutor also said that Duncan's statements to investigators showed "guilty knowledge," which was a "darn good indication" that he killed Yeager.
The jury convicted Duncan of first-degree murder on January 29, 1985, and he later received a sentence of life without parole, to be served at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
Duncan quickly appealed. He argued, among other things, that Judge Shea had erred when he wouldn't let Duncan's attorney examine a supplemental report that Peterson had used to refresh his memory during testimony. Louisiana's Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction on December 15, 1987.
During the next 17 years, Duncan filed a series of pro se motions for a new trial and petitions for writs of habeas corpus in state and federal courts. With funds he received in part from selling his plasma in prison, he hired an investigator, who took his money without performing the proper work.
In his appeals, Duncan said that he had been improperly questioned by the Oregon and New Orleans officers and that prosecutors had failed to disclose the police reports highlighting the discrepancies between Emberling's initial descriptions and her trial testimony. He also said that he had received ineffective assistance of counsel, because his attorneys made mistakes during the trial and didn't properly investigate his case.
The state and federal courts affirmed the convictions and denied his petitions and appeals. On January 18, 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a lower-court ruling and said that prosecutors did not have to disclose the New Orleans police reports because they did not include any exculpatory evidence; whatever hesitation Emberling presented during her initial identification didn't really contradict her testimony. It was due to fear, not uncertainty, the court said.
Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) began representing Duncan in 2004. The organization began reinvestigating the case and filed numerous public-records requests for documents from police and prosecutors. Building from earlier motions filed by Duncan, IPNO filed a new petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on October 8, 2008.
The petition reasserted that Emberling's identification, based on her statements to police, was far less certain than her testimony suggested. The reinvestigation had also forced the release of the reports by the police in Clackamas County and New Orleans, including the communications between the two departments.
These documents showed that Louisiana officials had sent the Oregon detectives information stating the race and gender of Emberling and Yeager. This contradicted Peterson's testimony that he was unaware of these facts. In addition, the records showed that Reed was the author of the reports detailing the Clackamas interviews with Duncan, and that Reed, not Peterson, was Demma's point person in Oregon. This contradicted Demma's testimony.
IPNO's research had uncovered Reed's conviction and his statement about Peterson's involvement. "Reed's felony conviction and dishonesty, as well as Peterson's complicity, would have seriously undermined the state's case had they been made known to the jury," the petition said.
The habeas petition also said Duncan's attorneys had provided ineffective representation, in part due to a lack of time and resources. Four attorneys at various times represented Duncan, and they didn't always pass on relevant information. The two attorneys who tried the case made no effort until the trial to show Duncan had received gold teeth several years before the murder. IPNO investigators also found the cousin's birth certificate, confirming that his birthday was August 8.
The habeas petition said Duncan's attorneys had failed to interview Emberling prior to her testimony. The petition said this could have revealed that she initially described the gunman as light-skinned and stocky, in conflict with Duncan's actual appearance. In addition, the attorneys didn't try to investigate the two callers to the Crime Stoppers tip line or get this evidence excluded as hearsay. (The first caller simply referred to Duncan as the "perpetrator;" the second did not say he had committed a crime, just where he was.) The petition said that Duncan's attorneys were hamstrung by the state's lack of disclosure; they didn't know what they didn't know.
An investigator with IPNO interviewed Emberling in 2004. She said in a statement that she still felt like she picked the right person, but she also gave additional detail about how she became certain of her identification. "When I saw the picture that was Calvin Duncan, I told the detective that I needed to see him in person to be sure," she said. "Then I saw him being arrested and brought back to New Orleans on the TV and when I saw him then I knew that was him."
The petition said Emberling's statement ran counter to the state's closing trial argument and the 2002 ruling from the Fifth Circuit. "Ms. Emberling was uncertain for almost six months after seeing Mr. Duncan's photo and only gained the certainty she showed at trial after viewing Mr. Duncan in the highly suggestive posture of being returned to New Orleans in police custody, identified on television as her late boyfriend's murderer."
Running parallel with the federal petition, Duncan's attorneys had also filed a motion in state court challenging previous denials of his motions for post-conviction relief. This newest state motion was based largely on the state's failure to disclose evidence related to misconduct by Reed and potential misconduct by Peterson. Judges in both district court and the Court of Appeals denied the motion as time-barred, but the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed those courts on January 22, 2010, ordering an evidentiary hearing.
The hearing didn't happen. On January 7, 2011, Duncan struck a deal with the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office, now headed by Cannizzaro. His murder conviction was vacated, and he agreed to plead guilty to manslaughter and attempted armed robbery. Duncan received a new sentence of 49 years, but he was released on time served.
While in prison, Duncan had worked as a clerk in the prison law library, making 20 cents an hour, and helping fellow inmates with their appeals. One inmate would later write that Duncan "had the most brilliant legal mind in Angola." Following his release, Duncan played a critical role in helping attorneys gather evidence and frame arguments for a challenge to Louisiana's use of non-unanimous juries. The U.S. Supreme Court barred these verdicts in 2020, although it later clarified that the ruling didn't apply retroactively. Oregon and Louisiana had been the only two states that allowed these verdicts.
Separately, Duncan enrolled in and graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans in 2018. He then attended Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.
In 2021, after Cannizzaro did not run for reelection, Jason Williams became the new district attorney for Orleans Parish. That year, the Louisiana State Legislature enacted a law allowing persons who had pled guilty to challenge their convictions if they had evidence of innocence that was never presented in court.
The law took effect on August 1, 2021, and Duncan's attorneys filed a motion to vacate his conviction on July 26, 2021. The motion said that Duncan never had a chance for a court to hear his evidence of innocence, and that he took the plea deal because it was the surest path to release from prison. It also said that the convictions for manslaughter and attempted armed robbery, if allowed to stand, would likely prevent his admission to the bar after his graduation from law school.
On August 3, 2021, Judge Nandi Campbell of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court vacated Duncan's conviction. She wrote: "Given the State's prior suppression of evidence relating to the Oregon officers' possible criminal activity, the inconsistencies of the minor's eyewitness identification, Mr. Duncan's alibi bolstered by the Defense's post-trial discovery of Mr. Duncan's cousin's birth certificate, and Mr. Duncan's extensive service and numerous contributions to the community post-release, the sentence imposed on January 7, 2011 is unconstitutionally excessive."
After Judge Campbell's ruling, the state dismissed the charges against Duncan.
- Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 01-31-2023 Last Update Date: 01-31-2022
Raymond Flanks
On November 17, 2022, 59-year-old Raymond Flanks was exonerated of a 1983 murder in New Orleans, Louisiana, and was released from prison after serving nearly 39 years from his arrest.
Flanks was 20 years old when he was arrested on December 23, 1983 for the robbery of a supermarket. Police put his photograph into a photographic lineup and showed it to Faye Carnesi.
On December 17, 1983, Carnesi had been in her car waiting for her 69-year-old husband Martin Carnesi. She noticed a Black man wearing a shower cap walk up just as Martin came down the sidewalk from their home in New Orleans. The man announced a robbery and shot Martin once in the chest. The robber then reached into the car, took Faye's purse, and fled. Martin Carnesi died.
Faye was extremely distraught. She passed out and was revived. She described the gunman as a Black male with a mustache, in his late 20's, 5 feet 10 inches tall, and about 150 pounds. The police report said the gunman sped off in a light blue car-the make and model were unknown.
The police noted that there had been similar robberies targeting elderly people in the same neighborhood on November 29, December 3, December 8, December 12, and December 18.
In the December 3, 8, and 12 robberies, the perpetrator was described as a Black male wearing a shower cap. The victims were, like Carnesi, elderly and white and were on the street or in a parking lot in the same neighborhood where Carnesi was killed. In two of those crimes, the victims said the robber had a soft or polite manner of speaking. The victim of the December 3 robbery said the gunman was in his 30's. The victims of the December 8 robbery said the gunman was clean shaven and had a small pug nose.
By the time Flanks went to trial in Orleans Parish District Court in 1984, he had pled guilty to the supermarket robbery.
On the day that Flanks was arrested for the supermarket robbery, police seized a gun from him, and he was driving a light blue 1982 Chevrolet Citation. A New Orleans police department analysis reported that the gun was the weapon used to kill Carnesi based on an analysis of the bullet retrieved from Carnesi's body and a shell casing found at the scene. Flanks was charged under the name of Raymond Flank.
Although Flanks was younger than the robber described by Faye Carnesi as well as the other victims, he did not have a pug nose, and his facial hair was different, police put his photograph into a photographic lineup. Police said that Faye Carnesi had identified a photograph of Flanks as the man who shot her husband.
The defense learned of the analysis of the gun just before the trial and requested an independent analysis. The trial judge allowed for the review, but declined to grant a continuance, so nothing was done.
Flanks went to trial in Orleans Parish District Court in August 1984. The prosecution sought the death penalty. Faye Carnesi identified Flanks as the gunman. And a police officer testified that the gun recovered from Flanks on December 23, 1983 was the gun used to kill Carnesi. Flanks's brother, Ralph, testified that Flanks was at home at the time of the murder.
A mistrial was declared, however, when the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict.
Prior to the second trial, an analysis of the weapon by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms excluded the weapon as the source of the bullet and casing, so there was no firearms analysis testimony when Flanks went to trial a second time on May 14, 1985. The prosecution again sought the death penalty. Without the firearms analysis evidence, Faye Carnesi's testimony was all that was left of the prosecution's case.
Under questioning by Assistant District Attorney James "Jim" Williams, Faye Carnesi described how she came to identify Flanks out of the photos presented in the photographic lineup by the lead detective, John Dillmann.
"I glanced at these -- In other words, I looked at four of them at first and I put them on the side," she said. "I had two left and I looked at them. I looked at one picture and then looked at this and I got hysterical, and said, 'This is the man. I am sure this is the man.'"
She continued, "I said, 'I am sure this is the guy. I am sure this is the guy.' I started shaking and I grabbed my son-in-law's hand so tight until his hand was white from me gripping it. I said, 'Get me a flashlight, Jerry. Let me look. I have to be positive. I do not want to accuse anyone of killing my husband unless I am sure.'"
Faye testified that when she aimed the flashlight at Flanks's photo, she knew "it was him. This is the man that killed my husband. This man. I can't never forget his face never, ever. If I live to be a thousand years old. Every night when I go to bed I see this man shoot my husband."
Detective Dillmann testified that Faye aimed the flashlight at Flanks's photo, she began to weep, and said she was positive Flanks was the gunman. Dillmann said he did not "do anything to influence her to set her up to pick out the picture." He also said he was positive that neither he nor anyone else did anything to influence Faye.
Dillmann also told the jury that on the day of the crime, Faye told him that she saw "a late model automobile" flee the scene.
Flanks' brother again testified that Flanks was home at the time of the crime. On May 15, 1985, Flanks was convicted of first-degree murder. The jury voted against capital punishment, and Flanks was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He was later sentenced to 15 years in prison for the supermarket robbery.
Decades later, Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) filed a public records act request and obtained Faye's previously undisclosed grand jury testimony as well as numerous police reports relating to the Carnesi shooting and the other similar robberies.
These reports presented a different picture of the evidence-much of which contradicted or undermined Faye's identification of Flanks.
For instance, Faye had told the grand jury that when she was shown the photographic lineup, she said she remembered "one thing about this man. He had a little white blotch on the side of his cheek, a little white mark, like discolored looking." Flanks did not have such a blotch.
She testified that Detective Dillmann had shaken his head from side to side and said, "That's him." She said she concluded that the photograph of Flanks that she was shown did not show the side of his face with the mark.
The reports showed that on the day of the crime, the perpetrator's car was described as of unknown make and model. The reports of the other robberies said the robber drove an old car that was either light gray or light blue. Faye had said she only saw the back end of the car as it fled from her husband's murder. In her grand jury testimony, she said the car was old and pale blue. At trial, Dillmann testified that she told him it was a light blue late model car.
Flanks, when arrested, was driving a light blue 1982 Chevrolet-only one year old.
In May 2022, IPNO attorney Richard Davis presented its information to the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office. In 2021, Jason Williams, newly elected District Attorney, had created a civil rights division to reinvestigate claims of innocence, wrongful convictions, and excessive sentences.
On November 14, 2022, Davis and the prosecution submitted a joint agreement and motion to vacate Flanks' conviction.The motion outlined the evidence that had not been disclosed to Flanks' defense at the time of his conviction.
"The parties agree that, in this case which relied on a single eyewitness, competent counsel armed with the favorable evidence would have been able to present a compelling case that Mrs. Carnesi was innocently mistaken when presented with the wrong suspect, that [Flanks] did not resemble the perpetrator and that the car he was arrested in did not fit the one at the crime scene," the motion said.
The motion noted: "The jury heard that Mrs. Carnesi had '20/20' vision while wearing her glasses and was standing face-to-face with the perpetrator during the crime. Counsel armed with the favorable evidence would have been able to ask her about her testimony to the grand jury that she could not 'see too well, you know, to drive at night.'"
The motion said that the undisclosed evidence would have allowed Flanks's defense attorney to show that Detective Dillmann "altered the age of the perpetrator, age of the perpetrator's car, appearance of the perpetrator's gun, and appearance of the perpetrator's mustache to fit the State's case" against Flanks.
On November 17, 2022, the motion was granted, the conviction was vacated, and Flanks was released.
In a statement, IPNO said: "Detective Dillmann has been implicated in three prior wrongful convictions. [Assistant District Attorney] Jim Williams has also been implicated in three prior wrongful convictions. In fact, Mr. Williams secured the notorious wrongful conviction and death sentence ofJohn Thompsonthe week before he secured the wrongful conviction and life sentence of Mr. Flanks. "
IPNO attorney Davis declared: "It is unconscionable that we are still finding unreviewed wrongful convictions caused by John Dillmann and Jim Williams, and I am sure that there are more still to find. It is also unconscionable that neither man has suffered any professional consequences for their misconduct. The criminal legal system still does not do enough to address the harm it does to Black people."
In November, Flanks filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of New Orleans, the New Orleans police department, the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office, former detective Dillmann, and other unnamed officers.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 01-03-2023 Last Update Date: 04-16-2024
John Floyd
On November 26, 1980, the body of William Hines was found in his apartment in New Orleans. Two days later, the Friday after Thanksgiving, the body of Rodney Robinson was found in a room at the nearby Fairmont Hotel.
The murders happened in the city's French Quarter, and police investigated the crimes under the theory that the same person had killed both men. Robinson and Hines had each been stabbed to death. There were no signs of forced entry. Both men were naked. At each crime scene, there were two glasses of whiskey and extensive blood splattering. Both men were gay, and the police believed that Hines and Robinson had each invited a man in to have sex.
A security guard said she saw a black man running out of the Fairmont Hotel the night Robinson was killed, although she did not get a good look at his face. A blood-stained cap was found outside Robinson's room. It contained a hair that, after analysis, was determined to be from a black person other than Robinson. There were pubic hairs found on Hines's bed that were also determined to be from a black man. Hines was white, but a friend told police that Hines liked black partners.
The police initially pursued black suspects. One potential suspect was released after police said he was not the source of fingerprints left in Robinson's room. Another was let go after an interrogation failed to bring a confession. This part of the investigation would not be disclosed to Floyd's defense attorney.
The police also received a tip from a man named Gerald Griffin. He said 31-year-old John Floyd, who is white, had made some offhand comments about the murders of Hines and Robinson after Griffin and Floyd had spent the night drinking together a few days after the murders. Floyd, Griffin said, wanted to know whether checking into a detox center might prevent him from being held accountable for his actions.
At the time, Floyd was a drifter and itinerant deckhand with a substance-abuse problem. He had no permanent address and would occasionally have sex with the men who let him stay the night. When drunk, Floyd was a bit of a troublemaker. Around the bars, he was known as "Crazy Johnny." A bartender named Stephen Edwards told police that Floyd threatened to hurt him the way Hines was hurt.
On January 19, 1981, Detective John Dillmann and Officer John Reilly found Floyd at a bar in the French Quarter. They began questioning him about the murders, but then asked Floyd to accompany them to the police station. A few hours later, Floyd had signed two confessions. He was charged with two counts of second-degree murder.
Floyd was tried for both murders at a single trial, which began on January 5, 1982. Several witnesses testified that Floyd had made vague statements of guilt or involvement. There was no physical evidence tying him to either crime scene. A tissue containing semen had been found in Robinson's room, and Floyd had confessed to wiping his penis with a tissue after having sex with Robinson. But the blood type of the semen wasn't consistent with either Robinson or Floyd, and neither was the hair found in the blood-stained cap (although the blood type was the same as Robinson's).
Floyd took the stand in his own defense. He said the police had threatened and beaten him before he signed the confessions, and that the officers had plied him with drinks before taking him to the police station. (Several years later, in 1987, the Louisiana Supreme Court would suppress a confession Dillmann had obtained because of strong evidence that he beat a suspect.)
On January 6, 1982, Judge Jerome Winsberg of Orleans Criminal District Court convicted Floyd of second-degree murder in the death of William Hines, and acquitted him in the death of Rodney Robinson. He was sentenced to life without parole at the state penitentiary in Angola.
Floyd's trial attorney was delinquent in filing an appeal. He forfeited the right to make oral arguments, and the brief that he ultimately filed contained less than seven pages of argument. Floyd's conviction was affirmed by the Louisiana Supreme Court on June 27, 1983.
For more than 20 years, his case went nowhere. He lacked an attorney and was at a prison where it was all but impossible to review trial documents. In addition, Floyd had greater deficiencies than most inmates. Later testing showed he had an IQ of 59, was easily manipulated, and had an inability to read beyond a second-grade level. At trial, he had been unable to read his own confession.
But despite those hurdles, Floyd was dogged in asserting his innocence. He wrote more than 500 letters to the Innocence Project of New Orleans (IPNO), which began investigating his case in 2004.
IPNO appealed Floyd's conviction in state court, but the motion was hastily denied by a trial judge and that ruling was affirmed 4-3 by the Louisiana Supreme Court in 2010. His attorneys turned to the federal courts, filing a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court in New Orleans in November 2011.
The petition asserted Floyd's innocence in both crimes, based in part on evidence that was withheld by the prosecutor and in part on other newly discovered evidence.
During the investigation, police had dusted a whiskey bottle and two glasses in Hines's apartment. In 2008, IPNO discovered a fingerprint analyst's log book that said the prints found were neither Floyd's nor Hines's. But the results of that analysis had not been disclosed. Similarly, records showed that the source of fingerprints found on glasses in Robinson's room and in his car had not come from Robinson or Floyd. That information was also withheld from Floyd's defense team.
During the trial, a forensic analyst had testified about the hair found in the blood-stained cap. When Floyd's attorney asked him whether it was possible to compare that hair to pubic hairs found in Hines's bed, the analyst said that such a comparison wasn't possible because the hairs were from different parts of the body. What he failed to say - and the state didn't disclose at the time - is that pubic hairs had also been recovered from Robinson's bed. By the time that information was revealed, in 2004, the hair sample from the Hines crime scene had been lost. Mitochondrial DNA analysis done in 2007 on the Robinson hair samples excluded Floyd as the source.
One reason that Floyd's attorneys had trouble discovering new evidence is that most of the police files were missing. Dillmann had taken them, in violation of department policy, to write a book about the murders. The files were never returned and then destroyed in Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Dillmann's account in his book, published in 1989, as well as in later interviews about the case supported Floyd's assertion that the confession was coerced and false.
For example, Dillmann had testified that he and his partner were only with Floyd at the bar for a few minutes before he was taken to the police station. He didn't mention any drinks. Reilly testified that they bought Floyd only one beer. But in an interview in 1998, Dillmann boasted about plying Floyd with drinks before arresting him.
Separately, prior to Floyd signing his confession, Dillmann had shown him a photo of Hines's body in the apartment. In the photo, Hines was lying on his back on the floor, clear of the bed. Floyd's confession said that after he stabbed Hines, "He fell on the floor next to the bed. I got dressed and when I left he was still lying there." But that photo was taken later, and the body had been moved; when police arrived at the apartment, Hines's legs were under the bed, and he was in a fetal position.
Floyd gave two confessions, one for Hines and one for Robinson. In the Hines confession, he had also confessed to killing Robinson. His attorneys argued that his acquittal on the charge of killing Robinson, combined with the powerful evidence of his actual innocence in that murder, made his confession to Hines's murder equally untenable.
In 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Vance granted Floyd's petition. She noted the substantial physical evidence that Floyd didn't kill Robinson, and reasoned that his confessions to the police and his statements to acquaintances were therefore also suspect. "This Court finds that Floyd's confession to the Hines murder - as discredited by its association with the false Robinson confession, Floyd's vulnerability, and evidence of Detective Dillmann's improper interrogation techniques - is an especially unreliable confession."
The state of Louisiana appealed. While that appeal went forward, Floyd was released from prison on June 22, 2017 under supervised probation. The former warden at Angola noted that Floyd had been a model prisoner, one of only a handful trusted to help out in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld Vance's order on June 25, 2018.
District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro of Orleans Parish dismissed the charge against Floyd on November 20, 2018. He said he still believed Floyd was guilty but that a retrial was impossible because witnesses and much of the evidence from the trial were no longer available.
Floyd learned of the dismissal while he was visiting relatives for the Thanksgiving holiday. "He just said, 'Thank God,'" said Richard Davis, the deputy director of IPNO. "I think (he) was overwhelmed and just wanted to be with his family."
In 2019, Floyd filed a federal lawsuit against the the City of New Orleans, Dillmann and two other police officers, and the district attorney's office.
In 2021, the state of Louisiana awarded Floyd $330,000 in compensation. In 2023, Floyd settled his lawsuit for $5.5 million.
- Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 12-03-2018 Last Update Date: 05-09-2023
Kendale Gordon
At about 10:30 p.m. on August 8, 2009, two gunmen with their faces covered by bandanas kicked in the front door of a home at 1810 Tricou Street in New Orleans, Louisiana and announced a robbery.
Darceleen Comadore, 22, was in the living room. Her 22-year-old sister, Patrice, was in bed. A friend, Earlitta Taylor and her four children were in the kitchen. The men ordered everyone to get on the floor and then went into the bedroom. Darceleen later told police she heard them demanding money from Patrice and then a gunshot. In fact, there were two gunshots.
Patrice was fatally shot in the head. One of the attackers also was shot. His partner, who appeared older, dragged him out of the bedroom. The wounded man fell on top of Darceleen. When he fell, his bandana slipped from his face. Darceleen was able to see him before the older man dragged her into the bedroom and demanded money. She told police the older man hit her in the face several times. Eventually, she was able to find Taylor's purse. She pulled out $200 and handed it over.
The men then fled in a car. Darceleen called police and told them that the wounded man, who had fallen on her leaving his blood on her clothing, was wearing a red bandana covering his face. The bandana slipped down when he fell. She said she recognized him as someone she had seen in the neighborhood and believed his name was Kendrick or Kendall. She said he had cross tattoos on his forehead and around his eyes. A police officer at the scene told Detective Barrett Morton that the description fit 18-year-old Kendale Gordon.
Shortly after police arrived, they received a report of a gunshot victim lying on the steps of a house at 1731 Mazant Street, about three miles away. Police found 18-year-old Jessie Bibbins III dead from a gunshot wound in the neck. The home was the residence of a maternal relative of Bibbins. Bibbins was wearing a black t-shirt, black jeans, and black tennis shoes. A red and white bandana was around his neck. Next to him was a bloodstained white t-shirt that appeared to have been used in a futile attempt to staunch the bleeding from the gunshot wound.
A witness said that a young man whose hair was in dreadlocks had dropped Bibbins off and attempted to tend to the wound.
Within three hours, Morton put together a photographic lineup that included Gordon and four others. Morton used a pen to draw crosses on the faces of the four fillers. Darceleen identified Gordon as the wounded man. Morton showed Darceleen another photographic lineup containing a picture of Bibbins.
She would later testify that Morton all but pointed to Bibbins. She said he went through the photographs and eliminated them all, except for Bibbins. She said she was 80 to 90 percent sure of her identification of him as the other attacker.
The following day, August 9, 2009, Gordon, whose hair was close-cropped and not in dreadlocks, turned himself in to police after learning he was being sought. He was charged with second-degree murder as Kendall Gordon.
Not long after, Darceleen realized that the attacker who fell on her was Bibbins, not Gordon. She told the police and the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office that she was mistaken. She gave a sworn deposition recanting her identification. She also recanted at a pretrial hearing on a defense motion to suppress her photo lineup identification. The motion to suppress the identification was denied.
Gordon went to trial on June 22, 2010 and chose to have the case decided by a judge without a jury. The trial lasted one day.
Police had recovered a .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol on the floor after the shooting as well as two expended shell casings and a clip containing 12 cartridges. The prosecution presented a stipulation that a firearms analyst had concluded that the bullets removed from Bibbins and Patrice Comadore were fired by the same gun. Another stipulation was presented that stated Patrice had died of a single gunshot wound to the head.
Darceleen testified and again said that she had been mistaken in her initial identification of Gordon. She denied that she had not been threatened to change her recantation.
Detective Morton testified that Darceleen identified Gordon in the photo lineup. He also said she had identified Bibbins as the older attacker, though she commented that Bibbins looked young in the photo. Morton denied that he influenced Darceleen's identification of Bibbins.
August Gaines testified that he saw Gordon on the street at Canal and Basin Streets, about five miles from the Comadore home. He said they had a conversation about 10:30 p.m., at the same time that the crime was occurring. Gaines said he saw Gordon the following day and that Gordon was upset because he had learned police were looking for him. Gaines said he told Gordon not to worry because he had an alibi.
The defense at one point erroneously told Orleans Parish District Judge Frank Marullo Jr. that Gordon already had a life prison sentence for another crime. The defense also failed to elicit testimony about possible other suspects and did not attempt to correct the misimpression that Bibbins and Gordon were known associates.
On June 22, 2010, Orleans Parish District Judge Frank Marullo Jr. convicted Gordon of second-degree murder. In issuing the verdict, Judge Marullo said he found Morton's testimony more credible than Darceleen's testimony, and said he believed that Darceleen was recanting because she feared for her safety. Gordon was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In August 2011, his conviction was upheld by the Louisiana Fourth District Court of Appeals. Gordon filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus, but it was denied in June 2013.
Ultimately, Gordon was accepted as a client by Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO). A motion for DNA testing was granted in April 2019. Forensic Analytical Crime Lab performed testing on the bloody t-shirt that was found next to Bibbins's body, as well as on the gun, cartridges, and latex glove.
The lab reported that a DNA mixture of at least one major male contributor and one minor male contributor was found on the t-shirt. The major profile was Bibbins. Gordon was excluded as the minor contributor.
Testing on the gun revealed at least four contributors, two of them males. The lab reported that there was "limited evidence" that neither Bibbins nor Gordon were contributors to this mixture.
Testing of the cartridges revealed evidence that Bibbins was a contributor to a DNA mixture of two people. Gordon was excluded.
Testing on the glove revealed Bibbins's DNA profile. A "trace" mixture was found in tests done on a swab of the bloodstain on the glove and on a swab taken on a portion of the glove that was not bloodstained. The lab reported that it was 35 times more likely that the bloodstain swab mixture came from unknown individuals rather than Gordon. The lab said it was 460 times more likely that the DNA from the other swab came from unknown individuals instead of Gordon.
Police never confiscated Darceleen's clothing, even though she said that the wounded attacker had fallen on her and his blood was on her clothing.
Based on the test results, IPNO attorneys Richard Davis and Kirschelle McGowan moved to vacate Gordon's conviction. The motion was joined by Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams and Assistant District Attorney Cormac Boyle of the office's Civil Rights Division (CRD).
The motion noted that the witness who said he saw Bibbins being dropped off told police that the man who dropped him off had dreadlocks, while Gordon had close-cropped hair. In addition, the witness, who was not called to testify at Gordon's trial, said the man told him that the victim was "Jessie." The motion said the man obviously knew that the home was the residence of a relative of Bibbins and therefore was Bibbins's partner in the crime.
In addition, the motion said that many witnesses, including Bibbins's mother, his girlfriend, and his best friend "have all stated that Mr. Gordon and Mr. Bibbins did not know each other and were not known to associate with one another."
The motion also said that the prosecution and IPNO attorneys "are in possession of information which may implicate other known suspects who have no connection to Mr. Gordon."
The motion said that the "CRD has conducted an extensive and holistic review and re-investigation of Mr. Gordon's conviction. This Office now believes there is clear and convincing evidence which creates a reasonable likelihood that Mr. Gordon did not commit the offense for which he was convicted and so no rational juror would find Mr. Gordon guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."
On December 16, 2021, the motion was granted. Gordon's conviction was vacated, the case was dismissed, and he was released.
IPNO attorney Kirschelle McGowan said, "I'm relieved that Mr. Gordon will reunite with his family for Christmas. This will be a Christmas his family will never forget. However, Mr. Gordon lost 12 critical years of his life, and of his son's life, that he can never get back, simply because the State chose not to listen to the victim, Ms. Comadore. Both of these families have suffered tremendously during this ordeal."
Gordon subsequently filed a claim for compensation from the state of Louisiana and in December 2022, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit under the name Kendale Gordon.
The compensation claim was denied, but Gordon appealed. In January 2025, the Fourth Circuit Louisiana Court of Appeal reversed that ruling and ordered that Gordon be awarded compensation.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 12-22-2021/Last Update Date: 01-31-2025
Robert Jones
On January 26, 2017, Robert Jones was exonerated of four separate crimes, including rape, robbery, kidnapping and manslaughter, which had terrified tourists and residents over a two-month period in 1992 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
A combination of mistaken witness identifications, perjury and other misconduct by police and prosecutors, and a false accusation by the true criminal led to Jones's conviction of the four crimes, including the fatal shooting of a British tourist.
All of the attacks occurred in or near the French Quarter, the popular tourist destination. The first occurred on February 13, 1992 when 27-year-old Curtis Boutte said he was robbed at gunpoint.
Then, on April 6, a man approached three women and a man. He pointed a handgun at them and ordered them to walk out of the French Quarter. One of the women was ahead of them and kept walking, but the other three-two women and a man-were commanded to lie in the street and give up their money and jewelry. They complied and then were ordered to get up and walk with the robber.
They walked as couples-one of the women, identified as T.P., with the robber and the other woman, identified as H.T. and man, identified as L.J., side by side in front of him. After a distance, the robber ordered H.T. and L.J. to disrobe and crawl under a car. They obeyed, and the robber then forced T.P. into a burgundy-colored car and drove her to the Desire public housing project where he forced her out of the car and took her into an abandoned building where he raped her.
The attacker then ordered her to go into a crawl space under a building. T.P. found a trash bag containing clothing, dressed, and calmly crept out of the crawl space. She walked past the burgundy car still parked by the building with the attacker sitting inside.
T.P. walked to the apartment of a family friend. Police were called and T.P. went to a hospital where she was examined and evidence for a rape kit was collected.
Eight days later, on April 14, 38-year-old Patrick Van Hoorebeek and 29-year-old Bethany Acosta were robbed at gunpoint as they walked in the French Quarter. Minutes later and around the corner, 27-year-old Julie Stott, a British tourist, and her boyfriend, 27-year-old Peter Ellis, were confronted at gunpoint by a man who ordered them to lie down in the street.When they were slow to comply, the gunman fired several shots and fled. Stott was killed. A bullet pierced Ellis's clothing, but he was not injured.
The murder of Stott set off a firestorm of adverse publicity in England. The Sun, a British tabloid, offered a $10,000 reward for information in the case. At the time, Ellis was unable to provide a description of the gunman, but he described the getaway car as burgundy colored. Thomas Van Develde told police he heard the shots and came out to his balcony and saw the silhouette of a man leaving the scene and getting into a burgundy car.
Three days later, on April 17, a tip to Crime Stoppers implicated 19-year-old Robert Jones and two of his acquaintances in Stott's murder. Jones was arrested on April 18 and taken to the police station. At the same time, the detective investigating the rape and robbery of T.P., L.J. and H.T. learned of the tip and assembled a photo lineup with Jones's photograph. T.P., the rape victim, identified him as her attacker. Three days later, T.P. and L.J. identified Jones in a live lineup. H.T. was unable to identify Jones.
None of the reports from any of the crimes mentioned anything about the robber's teeth. This would become a critical detail since Jones's teeth were capped in gold. Jones was identified even though the victims' description was of a man in his late 20's or early 30's and Jones was just 19.
On April 20, another couple was robbed at gunpoint in the French Quarter. The couple told police the robber fled in a burgundy car.
On April 22, police spotted a burgundy car that resembled the car that T.P. said her attacker forced her into to drive to the housing project. As they were looking at the car, 30-year-old Lester Jones approached and asked why they were looking at his car. Lester Jones was arrested immediately-he was wearing a Jesus medallion that had been taken during the rape and robbery of T.P., L.J. and H.T. Eyeglasses similar to ones described by the victims were found in the car. In addition, he was wearing a wristwatch that had been stolen from Van Hoorebeek in the robbery that occurred just minutes before Stott was fatally shot. Police also recovered a handgun from him and ballistics quickly linked the gun to Stott's murder.
T.P. positively identified the car as the one in which her attacker drove her to the housing project and raped her. However, when Lester was put in a lineup, T.P., L.J. and H.T. did not identify him. T.P. and L.J. insisted Robert Jones was their attacker. Robert Jones was charged with armed robbery, rape and kidnapping.
Lester Jones confessed to being involved in the murder of Stott. Based on that statement, the ballistics evidence and the identification of the burgundy car seen leaving the scene of Stott's killing, he was charged with Stott's murder. Although the Crime Stoppers tip implicated Robert Jones in the murder, he was not charged with that crime.
However, in June-after the $10,000 reward had been publicized and Robert Jones's photograph had appeared in the New Orleans media-Thomas Van Develde changed his statement. Although he initially said he only saw one person leaving the scene of Stott's murder and in silhouette, Van Develde for the first time identified Lester Jones as the gunman. After reading a news article that said the prosecution for the murder of Stott was "falling apart," Van Develde said that after Stott was shot, Robert Jones came to her body, rifled her pockets for valuables and fled on foot.
As a result, Robert Jones was charged with the attempted robbery of Ellis and Stott, the attempted murder of Ellis, and the murder of Stott. By then, Robert Jones also had been charged with the February robbery of Curtis Boutte, and the robbery of Acosta and Van Hoorebeek, although Acosta and Van Hoorebeek failed to identify either Robert or Lester Jones in live lineups.
In March 1996, Jones went to trial in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court on the charges of rape of T.P., and of robbery of T.P., H.T. and L.J. L.J. and T.P. identified Robert Jones as their attacker.
For the first time, T.P. testified that her attacker had gold teeth. The prosecution brought Lester Jones into the courtroom and made him show the jury that he did not have gold teeth.
Detective Herman Cade, who was involved in the Stott murder investigation, was asked by the prosecutor if, through his investigation, he had learned whether Robert Jones and Lester Jones knew each other. Cade said, "Yes," but before he could answer any further questions, the defense objected and no further questions were asked. Based on that response, the prosecution argued to the jury that not only did Robert and Lester Jones knew each other, but that Lester Jones lent his car to Robert Jones and that Robert Jones had given Lester some of the valuables taken in the robbery. Years later, Cade would testify that had he been specifically asked whether the investigation had evidence that Robert and Lester Jones knew each other, he would have said, "No."
The prosecution and the defense presented an agreed statement that the FBI had performed DNA testing and that no DNA profile could be discerned.
Robert Jones and members of his family testified that on the night of the crime, they were at a birthday party for Jones's son at Jones's mother's house, that Robert was there during the party and then stayed the night there.
The prosecution told the jury in closing argument that Lester Jones could not have been the perpetrator-as the defense contended-because T.P. had identified Robert Jones, not Lester, and that the two men did not look alike at all. In addition, the prosecutor said, "We know that Robert Jones used the car and we know that he knows Lester Jones." The prosecutor explained that he did not call Lester Jones on that point because he believed that Lester Jones would not testify for the state and against his friend.
On March 12, 1996, the jury convicted Jones of the rape of T.P. and the armed robbery of T.P., H.T., and L.J. Jones was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
By that time, Lester Jones had been convicted of the Stott murder and the robbery of another couple that occurred right after the Stott murder and had been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Weeks later, Robert Jones pled guilty to manslaughter for the shooting of Julie Stott. He also pled guilty to the February 1992 robbery of Curtis Boutte, as well as the robbery of Bethany Acosta and Patrick Van Hoorebeek, which occurred minutes before Stott was murdered. He received various prison terms up to 25 years, all of which were to be served concurrently with his life without parole term imposed in the rape and robbery case.
In 2003, having lost his appeals, Robert Jones wrote to Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) seeking help. In 2004, IPNO began investigating the rape and robbery case. However, a search for evidence to submit for DNA testing was fruitless because authorities said none of the physical evidence in the case could be found. Later that year, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.
In 2006, Robert Jones filed a post-conviction petition seeking a new trial. In an affidavit, Lester Jones said that he told the prosecutor who wanted Lester Jones to testify at Robert Jones's trial that he did not know Robert Jones. Moreover, Lester said that detectives had beaten him until he implicated Robert Jones, but he did not know Jones and had never lent him his car.
In 2007, at a hearing on the motion, Lester Jones testified that he told police that he never lent his car to Robert Jones, never associated with him, and never received from him any of the stolen items linked to the robberies for which Robert was convicted. The motion for new trial was denied and in 2009, the Louisiana Court of Appeals and then the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the ruling.
In 2010, IPNO filed another post-conviction petition asserting that more evidence that pointed to Robert Jones's innocence had been discovered in police and prosecution files-evidence that had not been disclosed to Jones at the time of his trial.
This petition was denied as well, but in 2014, the Louisiana Court of Appeal reversed the ruling and granted Robert Jones a new trial on the rape, robbery and kidnapping charges.
The appeals court found that the prosecution and police had failed to disclose at least three important facts.
First, they failed to disclose that T.P.'s original statement after the rape estimated the age of her attacker as late 20s or early 30s-a range that did not fit Robert Jones, but was very accurate for Lester Jones. The court also ruled that the prosecution had failed to disclose a report from the victim during which there was no mention that her attacker had gold teeth, which was accurate for Lester Jones, but not Robert Jones.
Second, the prosecution had failed to disclose that T.P. said that the rapist told her when he was driving her to the public housing project that he was taking her to his "neck of the woods." That was important, the court noted, because Lester Jones lived a block from where T.P. was forced out of the burgundy-colored car and Robert Jones did not live anywhere near that area.
Lastly, the prosecution had not disclosed that Detective Cade, who was investigating the robberies, had concluded that Lester Jones and Robert Jones did not know each other and that Detective James Stewart, who was investigating the murder of Stott had concluded that Lester Jones was responsible for all of the crimes that Robert Jones had been convicted of and that Robert Jones and Lester Jones had never met. The prosecution also failed to disclose the existence of four other crimes which were linked to Lester Jones by the burgundy car, his possession of items stolen in each robbery, that all were in the same general area and that there was only perpetrator involved in each crime.
In November 2015, Detective Stewart, who by then had become an FBI agent, testified at a pre-trial hearing in the case that he had told the prosecutors in the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office that there was no connection between Lester and Robert Jones.
Three months after Stewart reached that conclusion, Thomas Van Develde-the witness who initially said that he heard the shots that killed Stott, came out onto his balcony, and saw the silhouette of a man leaving the scene-changed his story. Van Develde then said he actually saw two people and identified Lester and Robert Jones in a lineup as those two people. Van Develde further elaborated that he saw Robert Jones rifle through Stott's pockets and leave with Lester Jones.
Three months after the new trial order became final, the prosecution disclosed for the first time a nearly 20-year-old memorandum in the Stott murder case that was written by a prosecutor and had never been disclosed to the defense. In the memorandum, the prosecutor reported that Lester Jones had recanted his police statements entirely.
At that point, the cascade of newly disclosed evidence persuaded Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Arthur Hunter to set bail for Robert Jones at $36,000, a far cry from the $2.5 million sought by the prosecution. Jones was released on November 20, 2015-after 23 years in prison.
On January 26, 2017, the day Jones turned 44, at a hearing on a motion by the defense to dismiss the indictment and bar reprosecution the prosecution decided to dismiss all the cases against him.
In January 2018, Jones filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office. He also filed a claim for compensation from the state of Louisiana.
In August 2021, Orleans Parish settled the lawsuit for $2,050,000, agreeing to make annual payments of $341,666 for five years and a sixth payment of $341,670. In addition, the District Attorney's office agreed to institute new policies relating to the disclosure of evidence to defense attorneys prior to trial.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 02-24-2017/Last Update Date: 08-18-2021
Wilbert Jones
On the night of October 2, 1971, a 26-year-old nurse, identified as A.H., was approached by a man with a gun in the parking lot of Baton Rouge General Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The man forced her into her car and got into the back seat. The gun discharged and blew a hole in the windshield on the passenger side of the car.
The man ordered the woman to drive to a secluded area and forced her to walk away from the car where he sexually assaulted her. Ultimately, he fled on foot.
The woman described her attacker variously as 5 feet 8 inches tall, 5 five feet 9 inches tall, and 6 feet 3 inches tall. She said he had a single gap between his front teeth and a smooth, soft voice.
In January 1972, Baton Rouge police arrested a man who was suspected of an attempted rape. During questioning, the man said that at the time of the alleged attempt, he was with 19-year-old Wilbert Jones. On the night of January 13, 1972, police picked up Jones at his home and took him to the police station.
The following day, A.H. viewed a lineup that included Jones. The men in the lineup were ordered to say certain phrases aloud that A.H. attributed to her attacker during the assault. She identified Jones as her attacker, although she expressed concern because Jones's voice was "rougher" than her attacker's, and because Jones was only 5 feet 3 inches tall-two inches shorter than she was.
Jones was charged with aggravated rape. In February 1973, he went to trial in East Baton Rouge Parish 19th Judicial District Court. The prosecution's case was primarily based on A.H.'s identification of him as her attacker. She told the jury she was "not 100 percent sure; I was only about 98 percent sure because he seemed taller that night and the voice was different." She also testified that the day after she identified Jones in the lineup, she telephoned the detectives and said that "the man that assaulted me appeared to be taller and I was worried about the voice. It wasn't quite the same." Her testimony was the only evidence linking Jones to the crime.
On February 6, 1973, the jury convicted Jones. He was sentenced to life in prison.
In September 1973, the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed his conviction and ordered a new trial. The court held that the prosecutor had improperly injected race into the trial by telling the jury in his opening statement that while driving in the car, the attacker said "something about white people having been taking advantage of the colored people and, of course, he wanted to get even with the white people." The court noted that A.H. was black [although she was very light-skinned] and never testified that her attacker made that statement.
"The statement in question was clearly of an effect to prejudice the white jury against this black defendant," the court said. "(T)he statement of the district attorney appealing to racial prejudice was incorrect and was not supported by evidence introduced at the trial."
Jones went to trial a second time and on July 10, 1974, he was convicted a second time based on A.H.'s testimony. He was once more sentenced to life in prison.
Jones, who steadfastly maintained his innocence, appealed the conviction, but the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld it in 1975.
In 2001, lawyers at Innocence Project New Orleans began re-investigating the case. In 2011, the lawyers filed a motion for DNA testing. However, they discovered that the physical evidence in the case had been destroyed after Jones was a convicted a second time.
The lawyers continued to investigate and ultimately discovered that another man, Arnold Ray O'Conner, had been implicated in two rapes that were similar to the attack on A.H.
On October 27, 1972, just 27 days after the rape of A.H., a 24-year-old woman was forced into her own car in the parking lot at Our Lady of the Lake of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge-a few miles from Baton Rouge General Hospital. The woman described her attacker as about 6 feet to 6 feet two inches tall, with a space between his teeth and a soft voice. The woman said her attacker forced her to drive him to a secluded area where he raped her and then fled on foot.
Police recovered fingerprints from the window of the woman's car and two years later, the prints were linked to O'Conner. By that time, O'Conner was in custody for a rape that occurred in September 29, 1973, after Jones had been convicted at his first trial. In the 1973 case, O'Conner was accused of ordering a young woman into her car near Baton Rouge General Hospital and forcing her to drive to a secluded area, where he raped her and then fled on foot-circumstances very similar to the October 29, 1971 attack and the attack for which Jones had been convicted.
In the 1973 attack, O'Conner was only charged with armed robbery although the victim had been kidnapped and raped. O'Conner also was never charged with the abduction and rape at the October 27, 1972 attack at Our Lake of the Lake Hospital. In March 1974, three months before Jones's second trial, O'Conner was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to prison.
Neither the police nor the prosecution disclosed to Jones's defense attorney any of the police reports relating to the two other rape cases or any information about O'Conner's prosecution.
In March 2015, Innocence Project New Orleans lawyers filed a petition for a new trial for Jones, arguing that the prosecution should have disclosed that the existence of evidence suggesting that O'Conner, "a serial kidnapper-rapist," was responsible for the attack on A.H. The petition noted that O'Conner fit the description of the attacker in all three crimes-particularly the gap between his teeth-and lived near where the women were abducted.
A hearing was held on the motion, and O'Conner refused to answer questions posed by Jones's lawyers.
On October 31, 2017, District Judge Richard Anderson granted the petition, vacated Jones's conviction, and ordered a new trial. The judge said the similarities between the rape of A.H. and the rape 27 days later linked to O'Conner by his fingerprints were "almost too numerous to list" and that the attacks were "almost a mirror image" of each other.
Jones was released on bond on November 15, 2017-nearly 45 years after his initial conviction-the second longest time spent incarcerated after a known wrongful conviction in U.S. history. Only Richard Phillips, who spent 45 years and two months in prison after being wrongly convicted of murder in Detroit, Michigan, served longer than Jones.
The prosecution appealed Judge Anderson's ruling, and on October 8, 2018, the Louisiana Supreme Court refused to overturn Jones's new trial. On October 11, 2018, the prosecution dismissed the charge.
Jones sought compensation from the state of Louisiana, but his claim was denied. District Court Judge Kelly Balfour, in a May 2021 ruling, determined Jones failed to prove his "clear and convincing" innocence because he didn't offer any new evidence that conclusively undermined the case prosecutors presented at trial.
In August 2022, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that Balfour misapplied the evidentiary burden Jones had to meet. The appellate panel said exonerees seeking compensation only have to show they are "factually innocent of the crime" they are convicted of, according to state law. The panel agreed that Jones proved it's "highly probable" the other man was the actual rapist.
In May 2023, the Louisiana Supreme Court agreed and found Jones to be factually innocent, paving the way for $480,000 in compensation.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 10-13-2018
Jerome Morgan
On May 22, 1993, a gunman opened fire at a Sweet Sixteen party in a hotel ballroom in New Orleans, Louisiana. Seventeen-year-old Clarence Landry III was killed and two others, Rogers Mitchell and Hakim Shabazz, both 16, were wounded.
Police arrived and locked down the premises and took down the name, age and address of every youth inside. One of the youths, Kevin Johnson, told police he chased the gunman outside the building and followed until the gunman leaped over a fence and escaped.
In June 1993, police received a Crime Stoppers tip that the gunman may have been Jerome Morgan. The detective assembled a photographic lineup that included the photograph of the 17-year-old Morgan, who had been at the party.
Two witnesses to the shooting were shown the photo lineup containing Morgan's photo. One witness did not identify anyone in the lineup as the gunman. The other, Kevin Johnson, put Morgan's photo aside and said he "knew that guy from grade school and he was not the shooter."
Police showed the same photographic line-up to Shabazz in August 1993. Police said Shabazz positively identified Morgan. An arrest warrant was issued for Morgan who was picked up in October 1993 and told police he was not involved. He was released two months later when the prosecution did not bring charges, apparently because Johnson had said Morgan was not involved while Shabazz said he was.
In early January 1994, when Landry's mother, Sandra, learned that Morgan had been released, she brought Johnson-who had earlier pulled aside Morgan's photograph saying it couldn't be him-to the police station where he was re-interviewed by police. The police said that Johnson changed his mind and identified Morgan as the gunman.
Morgan was indicted for murder and arrested in April 1994. He went to trial in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court in September 1994.The trial lasted one day.
The prosecution and defense presented the testimony of several different youths who presented different portraits of what occurred. Prosecution witnesses, including Johnson and Shabazz, said that Morgan became angry because Shabazz and other friends were getting a lot of attention for their dancing prowess and opened fire with a handgun. Johnson explained that when he first saw the photo line-up and said, "Oh, no, it can't be," referring to Morgan, he only meant that he was shocked that Morgan was the gunman.
The defense noted that Morgan was in the ballroom after the shooting and police recorded his identification, even though Johnson said he had chased the gunman out of the room and down the street.
The prosecution contended that police had not arrived at the ballroom until 30 minutes after the shooting, which was enough time for the gunman to return and attempt to blend into the crowd.
Morgan testified and denied that he was the gunman. Other friends also testified on his behalf that Morgan never left the room and identified someone named "Glenn Butler" as the gunman. Rogers Mitchell, one of the teens who was shot, testified that after the shooting, Morgan took off his t-shirt and attempted to wrap it around his bleeding leg.
On September 7, 1994, the jury convicted Morgan of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 2001, after Morgan's appeals had been rejected, Innocence Project New Orleans began reinvestigating his case. They discovered that the prosecution had failed to disclose a 911 call log that showed that the police had arrived at the ballroom and sealed it up within a few minutes after the shooting-not 30 minutes later-contradicting the prosecution's argument that Morgan had managed to shoot the victims, flee on foot and return to the ballroom before police arrived.
In 2011, Shabazz recanted his trial testimony and told the Innocence Project New Orleans investigators that he had been pressured by police to identify Morgan as the gunman. The following year, Johnson recanted his identification of Morgan as well, also saying that he had been pressured by police to identify Morgan.
Innocence Project New Orleans filed an application for post-conviction relief on Morgan's behalf and a hearing was held in 2013. Johnson testified that he and Morgan didn't know each other and that even though he had dismissed Morgan's picture from the first photographic lineup, police continued to pressure him.
Johnson described another photographic lineup at which a detective said, "Are you sure it's not this guy right here?" and pointed to a photograph of Morgan. Johnson testified that he relented and identified Morgan because police told him that Morgan was the gunman.
Shabazz testified that he initially told a detective that he did not see the gunman's face. The detective told him, "Jerome shot you," and asked Shabazz to come to the police station. There, the detective pressured him to identify Morgan. "It's almost like they painted this picture for me, that it was him," Shabazz testified. "What I did, it just wasn't right."
In January 2014, Orleans Parish Judge Darryl Derbigny vacated Morgan's conviction and granted him a new trial based on the recantations of Johnson and Shabazz and the failure of the prosecution to disclose the 911 call log. Morgan was released on bond in February 2014.
The prosecution appealed the decision. In January 2015, while the appeal was still pending, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro filed perjury charges against Johnson and Shabazz. Assistant District Attorney Matthew Kirkham said, "They either put an innocent man in jail for 20 years or they lied to get him out."
As a result of these charges, attorneys for Johnson and Shabazz stated that they would refuse to testify at Morgan's retrial for fear that their testimony would be used against them in the perjury prosecution. The prosecution said it intended to introduce the testimony they gave at Morgan's trial back in 1994 because Shabazz and Johnson were unavailable to testify in person.
Morgan's legal team, led by attorneys Robert McDuff of Mississippi, Nandi Campbell of New Orleans, and Kristin Wenstrom and Emily Maw of Innocence Project New Orleans, argued that the 1994 testimony of Shabazz and Johnson should be excluded because the prosecution deliberately made them unavailable to testify at the retrial by filing perjury charges.
"The state clearly has a motive to prevent the witnesses (from) testifying, because it will gain a litigation advantage if the witnesses are treated as unavailable," the defense attorneys claimed. "But for the state's action, the witnesses would testify consistent with their 2013 testimony at a future trial, which would in no way implicate Mr. Morgan and will therefore leave the state with no case."
In April 2016, a judge ruled that the transcript of the testimony of Johnson and Shabazz at the 1994 trial and the transcript of their testimony at the 2013 hearing on the motion for new trial would both be admitted in evidence at Morgan's retrial.
Morgan's lawyers appealed and in May 2016, the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed that ruling and barred the transcript from the 1994 trial from being read at Morgan's retrial.
On May 27, 2016-with the retrial set to commence on June 13, 2016-the prosecution dismissed the charge.
On January 30, 2017, following a trial before State District Judge Ben Willard without a jury, Johnson and Shabazz were acquitted of the perjury charges.
In May 2017, Morgan filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Orleans Parish District Attorney's office. The lawsuit was settled in July 2022 for $800,000. He also was awarded $330,000 in state compensation.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 06-01-2016 Last Update Date: 11-29-2022
Larry Moses
Just after 1 a.m. on January 4, 1994, 32-year-old Alma Causey and 42-year-old Daniel Ratliff were shot to death during an apparent robbery in the Desire neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Jean Barras, who called 911 to report the shooting, told police that she was inside her house at the corner of Feliciana and Humanity streets when she heard someone yell, "Lay down and give me your money." She looked out the window and saw a Black man pointing a gun at Causey and Ratliff. (They had been guests at her house. Ratliff had left to get beer, and Causey had gone outside to wait for him.) Barras said she left the window, then heard gunshots and looked out again. The gunman was gone.
In her statement, Barras described the gunman as between 5' 4" and 5' 8", and weighing 125-130 pounds. She said the man had his back to her and she couldn't see his face or identify him. She also said that she didn't see anybody else on the street at the time.
The case remained unsolved for several months.
On May 28, 1994, Frederick Stamps told police that while he was walking home late at night, a former girlfriend named Gail Jenkins lured him into an armed robbery with a man named Larry Moses. He said that Jenkins had pointed a gun at him, and Moses had pistol-whipped him and broke his arm. Stamps rode with the police, who eventually located Jenkins. She was arrested. Moses, who was 39 years old, could not be found. Moses lived across the street from Barras, and Stamps lived a few blocks away.
On June 6, about a week after his alleged altercation with Moses, Stamps told police that he had been a witness to the Causey-Ratliff murders and had seen Moses shoot the victims. He identified Moses from a photo lineup. In his statement, Stamps said he was coming back from the liquor store when he saw Moses talking to Causey and Ratliff. According to Stamps, "[t]he next thing [he] saw, Larry had a pistol drawn. He had it drawn already." Moses saw Stamps and told him to leave if he did not "want none of this." Stamps said he was half a block away when he heard the first shot. Stamps said he saw Ratliff beg for his life. He said that he ran away but also saw Moses walk back into his house.
During his interview with the homicide detectives investigating the double murder, Stamps discussed the May 28 incident. He did not mention a robbery. "Me and my old lady were talking," he said, "and I had her arm to walk away. Larry was there. I told him this was between me and my old lady not him. Then bam, he hit me in my face. Me and him went to fighting."
Police issued a warrant for Moses's arrest on the murders. He was arrested in Marietta, Georgia, on June 25, 1994, and returned to New Orleans to face trial on two counts of first-degree murder. He was later charged with aggravated battery in the fight with Stamps.
After Moses was arrested, Barras gave an additional statement that she believed Moses was the man's voice she heard before the shooting. In a memo dated August 5, 1994, Barras said she "is 75 % sure it was Moses." The memo didn't say how the identification was made or when Barras made it. In an interview a week earlier, Barras did not say she heard Moses's voice, although she reiterated that she did not see the shooter's face. Barras knew Moses, who was taller and heavier than the man Barras initially described to police.
Moses's trial in Orleans Parish District Court began on October 30, 1995. Prosecutors sought the death penalty, although they did not have the murder weapon or a motive for the crime. In addition, Moses had an alibi. At the time of the shooting, according to friends and relatives, he was visiting family in Bogalusa, Louisiana, about 75 miles north of New Orleans.
Barras testified about what she saw and heard of the shooting. Now, she said that she had seen the shooting, and both victims were on the ground, face down, when they were shot. Asked about the shooter's voice, Barras first said she "wasn't clear." Later, when asked about her certainty on a scale of 0 to 100, Barras said she was 70 or 75 percent certain that she heard Moses.
In addition, Barras testified that after the shooting, as she and other neighbors went outside to see what happened, she saw Stamps on the corner.
Stamps testified that he ran into Moses and the victims on the way back from the store. He walked between them and asked what was going on. He said Moses told him to mind his own business. He testified that he did not hear an argument, nor did he see a gun, but he heard two shots when he was about 15-20 feet away. He ran and then saw Ratliff fall to the ground from a kneeling position.
The prosecutor asked Stamps about the May 28 incident with Moses, which was serious enough to require surgery on his arm. "Was this fight over some woman?" Stamps said it wasn't and testified that a woman called him over to a car and then Moses beat him. Stamps testified that he and the police went looking for Moses but couldn't find him, and the police ended up arresting "another young lady" that night.
During cross-examination, Moses's attorney with the Orleans Indigent Defender Program asked Stamps if Jenkins was present during the fight. He said she wasn't, and he described his relationship with her as casual. "We was like a trick date," he said. "All right. It wind [sic] up a robbery thing with Mr. Moses and the lady."
Moses did not testify, but two witnesses presented his alibi. Oralee Stevenson, his aunt, testified that Moses had arrived in Bogalusa before Christmas and stayed with her until January 8. She said that during his visit, Moses spent the day eating and watching television, rarely leaving the house.
Mack Moses testified that he was out of town most of the Christmas holiday. He said he returned to Louisiana on January 2 and picked up his son on January 8. He testified that he believed his son was in Bogalusa the entire time.
On October 31, 1995, the jury convicted Moses of two counts of first-degree murder and then deadlocked 11-1 on whether to recommend he receive the death penalty. On November 20, 1995, Moses was sentenced to life without parole.
Moses began a series of appeals through the Louisiana state courts. His direct appeal, filed in 1996, asserted that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction, and that the trial judge erred when instructing the jury on Moses's "flight" at the time of his arrest. "It was clear error for the court to instruct the jury that leaving the state four months after an incident could be used to infer guilty knowledge or consciousness of guilt," the appeal said. The Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction in 1997.
Moses then appealed for post-conviction relief, asserting in 2000 that his trial attorney was ineffective for failing to vigorously cross-examine Barras and Stamps and for not discovering evidence of Stamps's deteriorating mental health at the time he told police that he saw Moses shoot Causey and Ratliff. A New Orleans coroner had signed an order for protective custody against Stamps on June 3, 1994, after his mother said he was suffering from mental illness and had made threats against family members. The appellate court rejected the motion in 2002.
At this time, Moses also contacted Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO), which had opened in 2001. He was placed on a waiting list, due to the high demand for the organization's legal assistance.
In 2013, Moses filed a pro se petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He claimed that his attorney on his second round of appeals had failed to file motions in a timely fashion. Separately, Moses asserted that the state failed to disclose the protective order against Stamps, which would have undermined his credibility. Although the coroner is not a law-enforcement agency, the motion said the office is "to a significant degree part of the prosecutorial team."
A federal magistrate judge denied the habeas petition on May 21, 2014, on procedural grounds.
In 2022, IPNO and the Civil Rights Division of the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office began a joint investigation of Moses's case. They interviewed new witnesses and found documents that had not been disclosed to Moses's trial attorney. This new evidence formed the basis of an application for post-conviction relief filed on March 3, 2023.
The motion said that prosecutors had failed to disclose substantial impeachment evidence against Stamps. This included his medical records, which indicated he was taking antipsychotic medication and was likely schizophrenic. In addition, the medical records contained the commitment order. (Prosecutors had previously denied having this order.)
Separately, notes in the prosecutor's files contained an interview with Gail Jenkins, who said that she and Stamps had once been in love, but that Stamps wouldn't accept that the relationship was over. She said Stamps once attacked her when she wouldn't leave with him. The undisclosed files also included Stamps's statements to the police about the incident with Jenkins and Moses that contradicted his trial testimony.
The motion said the evidence would have raised questions about whether Stamps was a reliable witness to the shooting or was looking to get back at Moses for interfering in his relationship with Jenkins.
The motion also said that Stamps testified falsely at the trial, when he claimed to have only a passing acquaintance with Jenkins, and that the prosecution failed to correct this false testimony based on what was in its files.
As part of the re-investigation, IPNO interviewed David Ducros, who was a friend of Moses and knew Stamps. In an affidavit, Ducros bolstered Moses's alibi. Ducros said he had driven Moses to Bogalusa in late December 1993. After Ducros learned of Ratliff's death, he called Moses to tell him the news, because Moses and Ratliff were also friends. Ducros said this was before cellphones were in wide use, and he reached Moses on the landline at his aunt's house.
Ducros also said in the affidavit that he ran into Stamps after Moses was arrested, when Stamps still had a cast on his arm. Ducros said he asked Stamps why he was going to court against Moses. Ducros said that Stamps responded: "I got something for him. He broke my arm so I'm going to say he killed those people." Ducros said he told Stamps that Moses was in Bogalusa at the time of the shooting. Stamps said, "They don't know that."
Prosecutors had dismissed the battery charge against Moses on February 23, 1996, several months after his convictions for murder. In the case file, a prosecutor noted "problems could arise if V's testimony was inconsistent with previous testimony."
The motion also reasserted Moses's claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and factual innocence.
On May 12, 2023, attorneys for IPNO and the district attorney's office submitted a joint stipulation on the motion for a new trial prior to an evidentiary hearing that same day. The stipulation said both sides agreed that the state had failed to disclose exculpatory evidence. It also said that if a retrial were to occur, Stamps and Barras would testify consistently with their testimony in 1995.
On May 25, 2023, Judge Kimya Holmes of Orleans Parish District Court granted Moses a new trial, based on the state's failure to disclose the impeachment evidence against Stamps. "This failure to disclose kneecapped the defendant's ability to develop this favorable evidence, and put the State of Louisiana at an impermissibly unfair advantage over the defendant," Judge Holmes wrote. Her ruling sharply criticized the state over its efforts to use a legal sleight-of-hand to avoid taking responsibility for not disclosing the commitment order.
Judge Holmes rejected Moses's claim that prosecutors committed misconduct by failing to correct Stamps's false testimony, writing that his unreliability as a witness made it difficult to ascertain whether the state knew he was not testifying truthfully. She also rejected Moses's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel and of factual innocence, noting that while his conviction was defective, there was no new scientific, forensic, or non-testimonial evidence supporting his claim.
After the ruling, Moses was released from prison on bond on June 14, 2023. Prosecutors dismissed the charges on July 19, 2023.
Moses told a local television station that he thought he was going to die in prison. But he kept fighting.
"Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, you say 'Oh well, ain't much I could do about it, but get stronger, because if I give up and feel sorry for myself I'm gonna disappear,'" Moses said. "Don't stop fighting you know? And that's what I did."
In July 2024, Moses filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of New Orleans, former New Orleans police detectives and supervisors, and former Orleans Parish assistant district attorneys. The lawsuit claims police officers fabricated evidence and suppressed exculpatory information, leading to his conviction.
- Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 08-14-2023 Last Update Date: 09-05-2024
Darvin Castro Santos
Just before 11 a.m. on July 18, 2009, a man walked into the Gold Star Diner in St. Bernard, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. He ordered a honeybun and a cup of coffee and asked the waitress, 18-year-old Amani Jaber, whether the diner cashed checks. She said yes, and the man continued to talk in Spanish on his cellphone.
A few minutes later, three other men entered the diner and joined the first man. One of the men, who appeared to be the leader and was wearing a dark baseball cap, asked the other men what they wanted. He ordered hamburgers for the group and then asked Jaber about cashing a check. When Amani's father, 51-year-old Baker Jaber, the restaurant's owner, came out front to help with the transaction, two of the men took out guns and one of them said, "This is an armed robbery. Don't move."
Amani Jaber fled to the back of the diner, with two of the assailants in pursuit. They caught up with her and bound her hands with a zip tie. Meanwhile, the other robbers demanded money from Baker Jaber, binding his hands with a zip tie and forcing him to open the diner's safe in the back office. He was blind in one eye and struggled with the lock. When the safe was opened, the robbers emptied approximately $7,000 into a plastic shopping bag.
Four customers entered the diner while the robbers and the Jabers were in back. Not seeing any staff, one of the customers, a 62-year-old retired FBI agent named John Fleming, went to find a server. He heard the commotion in the office and knocked on the door. Two of the robbers, including the one with the dark ball cap, came out of the office. The men bound Fleming's hands with a zip tie, ordered him to the ground, and then went back into the office, where Baker Jaber was held.
Fleming got up and ran to the front of the diner, yelling to his friends. One of the robbers knocked Fleming to the ground, and then two of the robbers ran out the front door and got into a Dodge Durango with Texas plates and sped off. Another patron saw the tag number - TRF 014 - and wrote it in the dirt. The two other robbers fled out the back, either leaving or forgetting to take the bag containing the money.
The St. Bernard Parish Sheriff's Office investigated the robbery, part of which was recorded on the diner's video surveillance system. They found two ball caps at the back of the diner. One had a camouflage pattern; the other, the longhorn symbol of the University of Texas. Deputies never dusted the diner for fingerprints, but they secured the coffee cup and honeybun for further testing. They also took the zip ties and plastic bag into evidence and entered the Durango's license plate into a database, which reported the vehicle as stolen.
More than a month later, on August 28, 2009, police officers in the small town of Natalia, Texas, near San Antonio, stopped a Durango for following too closely. They ran the plate and learned the vehicle matched that of an SUV used in a robbery. They arrested the driver, Selvin Rodriguez, and his passenger, 20-year-old Darvin Castro Santos.
Rodriguez and Castro Santos were initially charged with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and held in the Medina County Jail. Officials in Medina County sent booking photos of the men to St. Bernard Parish, where they were compared against video footage from the diner. Lieutenant Richard Mendel, the lead detective in the case, would later testify that it was his opinion that Castro Santos was the man wearing the dark-colored cap. Both men were extradited to Louisiana, each facing two counts of armed robbery.
On the same day as the arrest in Texas, Mendel presented Amani Jaber with two photo arrays, one with a picture of Rodriguez and the other with Castro Santos. She selected Rodriguez but said she wasn't 100 percent certain. She made no pretrial identification of Castro Santos. Amani's father was never shown a photo array and made no pretrial identifications.
More than three weeks later, on September 22, 2009, Mendel showed Fleming the photo arrays. He identified Rodriguez as the man who jumped on him and Castro Santos as the man who pointed a gun at his face. He also believed that the hat Castro Santos was wearing at the time of his arrest in Texas was the same hat worn by the robber with the gun.
Rodriguez entered a guilty plea on April 26, 2011, but his sentencing was delayed until after Castro Santos's trial, which began on January 18, 2012, in St. Bernard Parish District Court. Both Rodriguez and Castrol Santos were Honduran. Prior to trial, Castro Santos's attorney filed a motion to exclude any reference to his client's immigration status. A hearing was set, then delayed, and then the prosecution asked to move consideration of all pre-trial motions to the day of trial. The defense didn't object to that consolidation, and the judge never ruled on the motion to exclude.
During jury selection, Castro Santos's nationality, his English proficiency, and his immigration status became central issues. "If the evidence shows or it comes out that the defendant is not a United States citizen and may be here illegally, would any of you hold that against him?" Assistant District Attorney Glenn Diaz asked. Later, he continued, "And again, the fact that he may be here, that he's not like us, born here or raised here, you're not going to hold that against him; is that correct?"
According to the state's case, Castro Santos had spoken to the Jabers in English during the robbery. At trial, he required the use of a translator, which Diaz suggested might be a ruse, asking jurors not to prejudge Castro Santos if "he claims not to speak English or has a difficult time with it."
Joshua Gordon, Castro Santos's attorney, said: "Mr. Darvin Castro is an illegal alien. I'm not going to beat around the bush. If you go to any Home Depot, you're probably going to see a lot of them, short and stocky." Later, he would tell prospective jurors, "Does everybody understand that, even if found not guilty, he's not going to be released onto the street? He will be put in federal custody because of his immigration status. Does everybody realize that?"
Both Amani and Baker Jaber identified Castro Santos and testified that he was the robber wearing the dark ball cap. Amani Baker said Castro Santos had conversed with his accomplices in English, ordered the hamburgers in English, and then announced the robbery in English. Both father and daughter said they had made a pre-trial identification of Castro Santos, although Mendel testified that neither had done so.
When asked about Mendel's conflicting testimony, Baker Jaber insisted he had looked at photos after the arrest and told the detective that Castro Santos was the man who put a gun to his head. ''I seen [sic] it over and over. It's him. It's him. The guy is him.''
Fleming's courtroom testimony was the clearest identification of Castro Santos, but under cross-examination he said it was possible that he had seen a photo of Castro Santos either on television or in the newspaper before he made his initial identification. Fleming also testified that the ball cap that Castro Santos was wearing at the time of his arrest was the same hat worn by the robber with the gun.
Castro Santos testified through a translator that he was on a construction site in Houston, Texas, the day before the robbery. He said he finished working at 5 p.m., then cashed a check, wired some money, and went to his apartment. He said that on Saturday, at the time of the robbery, he was still in the Houston area, helping some co-workers with chores.His attorneys had his work records and an affidavit authenticating them, but they never obtained a ruling allowing the records to be admitted into evidence.
During cross-examination, Diaz questioned Castro Santos about his immigration status and illegal entry into the United States, asking, "So you have no respect for our laws?"
Rodriguez testified for the defense. He acknowledged his own role in the robbery, and said he had committed the crime with three other men: Raul, Eldon, and Rene. He said the four men had left Houston the day before the robbery, spent the night in Laurel, Mississippi, then headed back toward New Orleans the next day.
Rodriguez said that he had entered the diner first, then called Rene after confirming that the diner cashed checks. He said Rene pointed a gun at Baker Jaber and Fleming and tied up both men. Rodriguez said he remembered that his hands were shaking badly, forcing Rene to zip tie Fleming's hands.
Forensic testing of the honeybun confirmed Rodriguez's presence at the diner. Rodriguez said he told police about Rene's involvement in the robbery and that Castro Santos wasn't involved. Mendel testified there had been no mention of "Rene" prior to the trial.
On cross-examination, Diaz asked Rodriguez whether he was an "illegal alien." Rodriguez said he was. Later, Diaz asked, "To live here illegally means you live a lie every day of your life while you're here, correct?"
Rodriguez responded, "Yes, because I have no papers."
In closing arguments, Diaz again referred to Castro Santos's immigrant status. "Don't let him go to be deported and come right back and do it again," he said.
At the time of the trial, Louisiana allowed non-unanimous verdicts. On January 20, 2012, the jury voted 11-1 to convict Castro Santos of two counts of armed robbery. He was sentenced on January 24, 2012 to 50 years in prison. Rodriguez was also sentenced that day to 40 years in prison.
Castro Santos appealed, arguing that the witness identifications were unreliable because the circumstances of the robbery created a "substantial likelihood of misidentification." He also argued that because the money was left behind, there was no armed robbery. Louisiana's Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal denied his appeal in 2013.
On August 19, 2016, Castro Santos's attorneys with the Innocence Project New Orleans filed a motion for post-conviction relief and for DNA testing of the shopping bag and the zip ties used to bind Baker Jaber and Fleming.
The motion said that Gordon failed to have these items tested before trial and provided ineffective representation in numerous ways. It also said that Castro Santos had been convicted in part on mistaken cross-racial identification. (The Jabers are black; Fleming is white.)
The motion noted Gordon's failure to get the work records introduced and to locate witnesses that could support Castro Santos's alibi.
Prosecutors had discounted Rodriguez's description of the trip he and the accomplices took from Houston to Mississippi and then to St. Bernard Parish, saying that it made no sense. But the sheriff's office had subpoenaed Rodriguez's phone records, which supported that testimony. Gordon had these records but never used them, the motion said. The phone records would have also established whom Rodriguez communicated with before, during, and after the robbery. Gordon also failed to get the records from Castro Santos's cellphone, which had been placed into evidence at the time of his arrest.
The motion also said Gordon had been ineffective for failing to prevent the jury from hearing about Castro Santos's immigration status, for not objecting when Diaz made inflammatory statements, and for making his own anti-immigrant remarks in closing arguments and during jury selection.
Judge Kim Cooper Jones approved DNA testing for the three items in 2017 and 2018. On November 16, 2020, Castro Santos's attorneys - Charell Arnold and Richard Davis - supplemented their motion for relief and said that DNA testing had excluded Castro Santos as a contributor to genetic material found on the zip ties and the plastic bag.
The new filing also identified the man Rodriguez and Castro Santos called "Rene" and said he was the lead robber who pointed a gun at Baker and Fleming and tied up both men with zip ties. His DNA was not available to compare with the genetic material on the zip ties or the plastic bag. (Rene's full name is not being used to protect Castro Santos from retaliation.)
Rodriguez had testified that he called Rene at a number with a 615 area code just before the robbery. Rodriguez also dialed the same number with his one allowed phone call after he was arrested, and his cellphone continued to receive calls from that number after he was in jail. A forensic phone expert analyzed the use of the 615 number during the time of the robbery and said its path tracked the phone used by Rodriguez.
During the trial, Diaz had suggested that Rene and the other accomplices named by the men didn't exist. "Where do they live? What's their address," he asked, telling jurors that the men never mentioned Rene until they took the witness stand.
That statement was based on Mendel's trial testimony contradicting Rodriguez that Rene's name came up in police interviews with Castro Santos and Rodriguez. But Mendel's testimony was incorrect. Castro Santos's initial attorney, who was replaced by Gordon, said that Castro Santos and Rodriguez met with Mendel in 2010 and told him the names of the other men on the surveillance video. Rodriguez's attorney said the same thing.
The supplementary motion also expanded on the claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. Members of Castro Santos's legal team traveled to Texas and located the men he worked with on Friday and did chores with on the day of the robbery.They also located people who knew Rene and said he was "the leader of a gang that committed robberies and other crimes."
Separately, Rene is said to have confessed his involvement in the robbery to a man named Roberto Leon, who was in the St. Bernard Parish Jail with Rodriguez and Castro Santos. After his release, Leon contacted Rene, who said that he and a man named "Charlie" planned the robbery and Castro Santos had nothing to do with it.
In addition, the supplement said that the conviction was based on juror bias. According to an interview with the lone juror who voted to acquit, the jury was at a critical point in deliberations, evaluating the testimony of Rodriguez and Castro Santos, when one juror said that "she worked with Spanish people and that they lie."
The motion said, "This case is a perfect illustration of the harm that allowing non-unanimous verdicts causes: an innocent man from a vulnerable minority was convicted at a proceeding infused with xenophobia because the vote of one of the jurors could be ignored."
On Aug 2, 2021, District Attorney Perry Nicosia moved to vacate Castro Santos's conviction and dismiss his case.
In a statement, Nicosia said that both Diaz - who unsuccessfully challenged Nicosia for district attorney in 2014 - and Gordon committed errors at trial that were likely to lead to a new trial. He did not mention the DNA evidence, but said that new alibi evidence established that Santos was in Texas at the time of the crime, and that "justice required that Darvin Castro Santos's conviction be vacated."
- Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 08-21-2021 Last Update Date: 08-21-2021
Earl Truvia
In the early morning of October 31, 1975, 15 year-old Eliot Porter was shot and killed in the B.W. Cooper Housing Project in New Orleans, Louisiana. Twenty-year-oldGregory Brightand seventeen-year-old Earl Truvia, Jr. became suspects after a known drug addict, Sheila Caston, implicated them in the crime in exchange for reward money.
Both were arrested on November 15, 1975 and charged with second-degree murder.
On, July 29, 1976, Bright and Truvia went to trial in Orleans Parish District Court. The trial lasted one day. Caston-who used a false name on the witness stand to hide her history of mental illness and criminal behavior - provided the only evidence that implicated Bright and Truvia in the murder. There was no physical evidence linking them to the crime. The murder weapon was never found.
Defense lawyers for Bright and Truvia failed to impeach Caston's testimony with evidence from the coroner's report -which indicated that the death occurred at a different time than she testified to - and failed to visit the scene of the crime, which would have revealed that Caston could not have seen the shooting from the spot where she said she was.
After 13 minutes of deliberation, the jury convicted Truvia and Bright of second-degree murder. The judge sentenced them to life in prison without parole.
In 2001, the Innocence Project New Orleans took up their case. At a hearing on a motion for new trial, the Innocence Project showed that prosecutors had withheld critical exculpatory evidence from the defense lawyers. This included a police report naming other suspects in the crime as well as information that Caston was a paranoid schizophrenic who had been in a mental hospital the day before she testified at Bright and Truvia's trial.
They presented evidence that at the time of the trial, Caston was addicted to heroin, cocaine and amphetamines and had track marks over her entire body. She was had been jailed numerous times in the Orleans Parish Prison and had used eight different aliases.
The lawyers also presented a crime-scene expert who testified that a balcony blocked Caston's view. They presented a pathologist who said the victim probably was killed four to six hours after Caston said she saw Bright run from the crime scene. And they showed that between police interviews and court testimony, Caston's story changed several times.
In February 2002, Orleans Parish District Judge Charles Elloie granted the motion for new trial. However, Truvia and Bright remained in prison while the prosecution appealed. In March 2003, the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Judge Elloie's ruling.
On June 23, 2003, the Orleans Parish District Attorney dismissed all charges against Bright and Truvia, and said that the behavior of the former District Attorney's office was "inexcusable."
The next day, after 27 years in prison, Bright and Truvia were released. Each was given a $10 check from the state of Louisiana and a trash bag filled with their belongings.
Bright and Truvia filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking damages for their wrongful convictions. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2012. The state of Louisiana awarded each of them $330,000 in compensation.
In March 2018, Truvia and another person were charged with conspiring to smuggle drugs into the jail in New Orleans. He pled guilty and was sentenced to probation.
- Charles Armbrust
Posting Date: 08-29-2011 Last Update Date: 12-03-2018
Sullivan Walter
On the night of May 10, 1986, a 35-year-old woman (L.S.) was attacked as she was showering in her home in the Lower Garden District of New Orleans, Louisiana. The woman, who was white, told police that a Black man whose lower face was covered with a washcloth, put a knife to her throat and covered her head with a shirt. The man said that if she cooperated with him, he would not harm the woman's eight-year-old son who was asleep.
The woman said she was marched into an unlit empty bedroom and forced to engage in oral sex and then was vaginally raped twice. The man then left, and the woman called the police.
L.S. said the attacker was 18 to 20 years old, slender, 5 feet 11 inches tall, with thick eyebrows, jheri curls, two or three day's stubble, and wearing a backwards baseball cap. Police collected the shorts L.S. put on after the attack. She was taken to the hospital where a rape kit was obtained. An examiner said that an ultraviolet light had a positive reading for the presence of seminal fluid.
On May 12, 1986, Patricia Daniels, a medical technologist at the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office Forensic Laboratory received the rape kit. She reported that the vaginal swabs were positive for seminal fluid and a vaginal smear was positive for sperm. Daniels determined that L.S. had blood type O. Daniels did not identify any other blood substances on the swabs or a saliva sample from L.S.
On May 13, 1986, Harry O'Neal, a criminalist with the New Orleans Police Department crime laboratory reported that stains on the shorts were positive for the presence of sperm, and that there was no secretor activity. Approximately 80 percent of the population are secretors, which means their blood type shows up in their bodily secretions. The remaining 20 percent are nonsecretors, which means their blood type can be determined only by testing their blood and cannot be determined from their body secretions.
On May 14, 1986, L.S. worked with a police sketch artist to create a composite drawing of her attacker.
On June 23, 1986, police arrested 17-year-old Sullivan Walter for a burglary. A police officer who believed that Walter resembled the composite notified the detective handling the rape investigation. On June 26, 1986, a photo of Walter was included in a seven-person photographic array. L.S. identified Walter as her attacker, and he was arrested.
On November 13, 1986, Walter was indicted on charges of aggravated rape, aggravated burglary, and two counts of aggravated crime against nature. Although a juvenile, he was charged as an adult.
On December 2, 1986-less than a month later, Walter went to trial in Orleans Parish District Court. On the morning the trial began, the prosecution, for the first time, turned over the report from O'Neal to James Dunn, Walter's defense attorney.
The prosecution did not turn over, however, an August 1986 report of O'Neal's analysis of Walter's blood and saliva samples. In that report, O'Neal said that Walter's blood was not suitable for analysis and the saliva indicated no secretor activity.
Dunn did not seek to delay the trial. He had not retained an expert. He presented no evidence at all, let alone what Walter's blood type was and whether he was a secretor or nonsecretor.Had that been done, testing would have shown that Walter had blood type B and was a secretor-results that would have excluded him as being the source of the sperm left by the rapist.
The prosecution's case consisted of the testimony of L.S., who identified Walter as her attacker and also identified the blue baseball cap that Walter was wearing when he was arrested. There was contradictory testimony between the detective and L.S. over whether she had initially said her attacker had facial hair or "a few straggly hairs." The jury did not learn that L.S.'s initial description was that he was unshaven.
The jury also did not hear that the light was off in the bedroom where she was raped, and that the attacker ordered her not to look at him when the light was turned on. Dunn had marked a report containing that information as an exhibit, but never offered it into evidence or asked about its contents. Walter did not frequent the neighborhood where the crime occurred-evidence that could have been presented by the defense but was not.
O'Neal testified, "In this particular case, examination of seminal fluid revealed no secretory activity which would indicate that the individual who left the seminal fluid stains was a non-secretor."
The trial began and ended, including three hours of jury deliberation, on December 2, 1986. Walter was convicted of all the charges. On December 16, 1986, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Dunn appealed, arguing that the trial was unfair because of the late disclosure of O'Neal's report. On October 7, 1987, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld the conviction. The court said that Dunn had not sought any remedies for the late disclosure and had not sought to seek test results. However, the court remanded the case back to the trial court so that Walter could file a motion for a new trial.
On January 15, 1988, the police crime lab determined that Walter was blood type B and was a secretor. At a hearing on the motion for a new trial on April 8, 1988, Dunn presented the test results. The prosecution called O'Neal, who now testified that he "could not say whether" the stain on the shorts was left by a nonsecretor. His explanations were that the stain "could conceivably be too dilute" or that the clipping of cloth that was tested was "outside the original realm of the stain." Dunn asked no questions of O'Neal, and the hearing ended.
On July 1, 1988, the motion for a new trial was denied without a written ruling. Decades later, no transcript of the ruling could be found.
Dunn was granted leave to appeal, but never filed anything. The case then twisted and turned, and, in seeming defiance of the truth of the lab results, failed to get any traction in the legal system.
In May 1992, the Court of Appeal determined that no appeal had been filed and ordered the District Court to determine the status of the case. In August 1992, the District Court appointed the Orleans Indigent Defender Program to represent Walter. But nothing was done.
In September 1994, the Court of Appeal, noting the lack of activity, ordered the District Court to "provide this Court with the notice of appeal and to take all necessary steps to lodge those portions of the record required to determine the merits of the appeal of the denial of the motion for new trial."
In September 1995, more than seven years after the new trial was denied, an appellate brief was filed on Walter's behalf. It listed-incorrectly-Walter's name as Walter Sullivan on the cover page.
The Court of Appeal found that the District Court had not abused its discretion in denying the new trial, but in June 1997, the Louisiana Supreme Court remanded the case back to the Court of Appeal to consider whether the late disclosure of O'Neal's report was a violation of the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision inBrady v. Maryland, which requires the disclosure of exculpatory evidence to the defense.
The appeals court denied that claim as well, although it cited incorrect legal standards for doing so. Walter's appellate lawyer did not seek further review.
Walter remained in prison without legal representation from that time on until 2021 when Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) began reinvestigating the case and referred it to the Civil Rights Division of the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office. The biological evidence in the case had long since been destroyed. L.S. had died in 2011.
The defense reached out to Alan Keel, a forensic expert, who reviewed the transcripts of the trial, the post-conviction hearing on the motion for a new trial, and the reports of Daniels and O'Neal.
Keel concluded: "While there is insufficient documentation to independently verify Officer O'Neal's trial testimony, clearly Officer O'Neal believed at trial that the perpetrator was a non-secretor and the documentation is consistent with this belief."
Keel noted, "Absolutely nothing changed between May 13, 1986 and January 15, 1988 with regard to Officer O'Neal['s] testing of the shorts. If in 1988, Officer O'Neal had genuine doubts as to whether the analysis that he performed in 1986 supported his belief...at trial that the semen source was a nonsecretor, he should have repeated his initial analysis."
Regarding O'Neal's testimony at the post-conviction hearing, Keel said, "A claim by an analyst of not being sure if he tested the stain when testing for secretor status is disingenuous. Officer O'Neal would know that a claim that the area he tested could have been outside the stain was false. If he did not know this was false, he knew that he could not reliably perform a basic task that was part of his job."
Keel declared, "The shorts and the rape kit testing are inexorably related. Ms. Daniels should have been called to the 1988 hearing to elicit her opinion as to how the new evidence impacted whether Mr. Walter could be eliminated as the source of the semen on the vaginal swabs and shorts. If the vaginal swab and shorts stain findings are accurate, Mr. Walter is eliminated as the semen source and cannot be the assailant in this case."
Keel also reported "systematic deficiencies" in the way that serological testing was performed by the police crime lab and coroner's office during the 1980s and early 1990s. Keel suggested that "a comprehensive review of every case in Orleans Parish in which ABO/secretor test findings and testimony may have figured in the conviction of a defendant" should be conducted.
On August 25, 2022, Emily Maw, chief of the district attorney's Civil Rights Division, and IPNO attorney Richard Davis filed a joint motion to vacate Walter's convictions and to dismiss the case. The motion noted that Dunn's errors at trial "ensured that the jury did not hear his client was most likely categorically excluded as the source" of the biological evidence left by the rapist....The state has no interest in defending a conviction obtained by a fundamentally unfair process that likely led to the conviction of the wrong man."
The motion noted that L.S.'s identification was problematic because of the circumstances-the lighting was poor, she was raped and threatened and ordered not to look at her attacker, and the identification was "cross-racial." Such situations are well-documented as being prone to erroneous identifications.
Walter was released from prison that day. He had already completed his 35 year sentence and was serving time for a sentence imposed on the unrelated burglary for which he had been originally arrested in 1986.
IPNO attorney Davis said in a statement: "What is unusual about this case is how little effort was made to hide the injustice being done to Mr. Walter. The lawyers and law enforcement involved acted as if they believed that they could do what they chose to a Black teenager from a poor family and would never be scrutinized or held to account."
"This is not just about individuals and their choices, but the systems that let them happen."
In 2023, Sullivan filed a claim for $480,000 in state compensation. He also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking compensation. In May 2024, Sullivan was granted $480,000 in state compensation.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-31-2022 Last Update Date: 05-21-2024
Archie Williams
Around mid-day on December 9, 1982, a 31-year-old woman was in her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when someone knocked on the side door of her home. A black man, whom she recognized from an encounter about a month earlier, said he was collecting clothes for the needy.
The woman, identified as A.E., became frightened and attempted to slowly close the door as they talked. The man shoved a flier through the opening and told the woman to read it, then pushed the door open and forced his way inside. A.E. ran to the front door to escape, but it was locked.
The man threw her to the floor and pinned her down while he removed a knife from a briefcase he was carrying. Holding the knife to her neck, he took A.E. upstairs, forced her into a child's bedroom and told her to disrobe. The attacker then removed his clothing and raped her twice. As he was attempting a third rape, a friend of A.E.'s arrived to drop off A.E.'s young daughter. The friend, S.A., honked the car horn. When A.E. did not come out, S.A. went to the side door, saw it was open and walked inside, calling A.E.'s name.
The attacker, who was holding his hand over A.E.'s mouth so she was unable to respond, then stabbed the A.E. in the abdomen. The rapist then pulled A.E. toward the door, stabbed her in the chest, and shoved the bedroom door closed.
By that time, S.A. along with her child and A.E.'s child, came up the stairs. At the top, they came face to face with the attacker, who pulled S.A. into the bedroom and threw her against the bedroom wall. The children ran and hid. S.A. begged the assailant to leave and offered her car for his escape. She covered her eyes and told him that she would not look. At about this time, there was a knock at the door downstairs, later determined to be a mail carrier attempting to deliver certified mail. Prompted by the knocking, the rapist dressed and fled.
S.A. took A.E. to the hospital where she underwent surgery for treatment of her stab wounds and a rape kit was taken. Afterward, A.E. said she saw the attacker wipe the bedroom door with his shirt before he left. S.A. gave a description of the rapist, which was used to make a composite drawing. She said that based on her height of 5 feet, 4 inches tall and that she was wearing three-inch heels, she estimated the rapist to a few inches taller than her.
On December 15, 1982, while still in the hospital, A.E., who was 5 feet 7 inches tall, said her attacker was 5 feet 9 to 5 feet 11 inches tall. She also helped police create a composite drawing. This picture differed from the earlier drawing made from S.A.'s description. A.E. also said she saw a scar near the attacker's clavicle when he put his arms around her.
Later that day, police showed A.E. eight photographic lineups, each consisting of six pictures of black men. She did not identify anyone. The next day, December 16, police showed A.E. three more photographic lineups. Again, she did not identify anyone.
On January 3, 1983, no longer in the hospital, police showed A.E. six more photographic lineups, each containing six photographs. At this session, she said there was a person in one of the lineups that strongly resembled her attacker. She did not make a positive identification, but asked to see side views of the suspects.
Another lineup was composed using side views. She pointed to a photograph of 22-year-old Archie Williams-the only person whose photograph also had been in the earlier lineup-and suggested police "look for someone who looked like him." A.E. did not positively identify Williams because she said his hair was different.
But the next day, January 4, 1983, police showed A.E. another photographic lineup. This one showed Williams with a different hairstyle and she positively identified him as her attacker. This was the third lineup in which she had viewed Williams.
Police arrested Williams that night. The following day, January 5, 1983, he was placed in a live lineup. A.E. again positively identified him-the fourth time she had viewed a lineup containing Williams-a practice that would years later be condemned as suggestive.
S.A. also viewed the January 5 live lineup. She identified someone else-not Williams-as the attacker, although she later testified that she actually wanted to make two choices, but police told her she could only pick one.
On April 18, 1983, Williams went to trial in 19th Judicial District Court in East Baton Rouge Parish on charges of attempted murder, aggravated rape, and aggravated burglary.
A.E. testified and identified Williams. She also identified a scar on Williams's arm as the scar she previously she saw on the attacker's shoulder. A.E. said she had seen Williams about a month earlier when he came to her door looking for the "Williams" family.
S.A. identified Williams in court, but also conceded that when she viewed the lineup, she was not absolutely certain about her identification. She told the jury, "When I went into the lineup, there were six men, all about the same height, all about the same body build, all with approximately the same hairdo, all approximately the same age. So I was left with the impression of...eenie, meenie, miney, moe-just picking one. It could be almost at random. The things that I remembered were all the same." She also testified that she had a first and second choice. Although she felt reasonably certain about her selection of Williams, she added she was only about 70 percent sure.
A serologist from the Louisiana State Police crime lab testified that he could not absolutely say that the seminal fluid detected in the rape kit was from Williams. He did say that his tests did not exclude the possibility that Williams was the rapist.
Police testified that fingerprints were found in the bedroom that did not belong to Williams, A.E., or her husband.
A police officer testified that Williams became a suspect after a confidential informant told detectives that Williams resembled the composite sketch created from A.E.'s description.
Williams, who was 5 feet, 4 inches tall-several inches shorter than the descriptions given by A.E. and S.A.-testified that he was home asleep at the time of the crime. His mother testified she saw him asleep in her North Baton Rouge apartment at 11:30 a.m., the approximate time of the offense. Williams's sister and another friend, Albert Sterling, both testified that Williams was sleeping on the couch earlier that morning.
On April 21, 1983, the jury convicted Williams of attempted murder, aggravated rape, and aggravated battery. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 1984, the Louisiana Court of Appeals upheld his convictions.
In 1995, in response to a letter from Williams, the Innocence Project in New York began re-examining his case and in 1996 filed a motion for DNA testing. The prosecution opposed the motion and it was denied. It was not until 2007 that an appeals court ordered the testing be done. However, the tests were not of value to Williams, because only the DNA of A.E.'s husband was identified.
Meanwhile, as early as 1999, the defense requested the prosecution submit the unmatched fingerprints from A.E.'s bedroom to the FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). However, there was no law providing for such a search and the prosecution refused to do so.
Innocence Project attorneys Barry Scheck and Vanessa Potkin were subsequently joined by Innocence Project New Orleans attorney Emily Maw. They continued to fight to submit the fingerprints to IAFIS. Two fingerprint examiners had examined the fingerprints for the defense team and determined that nine were suitable for comparison. Nothing was done, however, because the prosecution continued to oppose the request as procedurally barred.
In 2009-without informing Williams's lawyers-the prosecution submitted the prints to the Louisiana State Police crime lab for comparison, but no identification was made. In 2014, IAFIS was replaced by the Next Generation Identification (NGI), a more powerful and precise system for comparing fingerprints.
On March 14, 2019, on the order of 19th Judicial District Commissioner Kinasiyumki Kimble, the prosecution agreed to submit the prints to NGI. This database search produced a list of possibilities for comparison, including Stephen Forbes, who had been convicted of committing sexual assaults in the same neighborhood where A.E. was attacked. Fingerprint examiners from the Louisiana State Police Crime Laboratory and from the independent firm Ron Smith & Associates agreed that Forbes was the source of some of the nine fingerprints.
Forbes, who suffered from mental illness, had been arrested in 1986 after breaking into a home and attempting to sexually assault a woman less than two miles from A.E.'s home. After his arrest, Forbes confessed to four other rapes-two in 1985 and two in 1986. Ultimately, he was found competent to stand trial, pled guilty and was sentenced. Forbes died in prison in 1996. He was never questioned about the attack of A.E.
On March 21, 2019, the prosecution joined Williams's attorneys in requesting that his convictions be vacated. The motion was granted, the charges were dismissed and Williams was released-36 years after his arrest.
East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III, told Williams in court: "As a representative of the state, I apologize."
In March 2020, Williams filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking damages for his wrongful conviction. He subsequently was awarded $330,000 in compensation by the state of Louisiana.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 03-23-2019 Last Update Date: 10-05-2022
George Toca
At about 6 a.m. on April 23, 1984, 24-year-old Ann Marie C. walked into a convenience store in the Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana, to get a soda. Her fianc, 24-year-old Todd S., stayed in the passenger seat of their car. As Anne Marie returned and got into the car, a young Black man asked her for some money. She replied that she only had 13 cents.
Just then, another young Black man thrust a gun into Anne Marie's face and demanded her keys. She complied, then got out of the car, and began fighting with this man. Todd, who had been dozing, heard the commotion, got out of the car, and began fighting with the first young man, 17-year-old Eric Batiste. The man with the gun told Todd to leave Batiste alone. He then fired a shot, which hit Batiste just above the ear and killed him. The gunman fled.
Officers with the New Orleans Police Department quickly arrived at the scene and took statements from Anne Marie and Todd. They gave interviews to Detective Louis Berard later that day.
Todd described the gunman as 15-16 years old, between 5'10" and 6' tall, 140 pounds, with a thin build, wearing a dark-colored T-shirt and faded but creased jeans.
Anne Marie described the gunman in similar terms: 16 years old, 5' 10" tall, 135 pounds, faded jeans, and a dark shirt. In addition, they both agreed that the gunman was taller and appeared older than Batiste. Anne Marie told Berard that she would be able to identify the gunman if she saw him again. Todd said he would not be able to make an identification.
The police department sent out a teletype about the shooting that included Batiste's name. Officer Marlon Defillo recognized the name and told Berard that Batiste was frequently with 17-year-old George Toca Jr. Defillo would later testify that the two boys were "inseparable."
On April 26, 1984, Anne Marie and Todd went to the police station to look at a photo array that included Toca. Each selected him as the young man with a gun who shot Batiste. The photo was only a headshot, with no indication of Toca's height or build. At the time, he was no taller than 5' 5" and weighed about 110 pounds. In addition, the mugshot was several years old and did not show that Toca had four gold caps with moons and stars on his prominent front teeth. Neither Anne Marie nor Todd had mentioned that in their descriptions.
Police arrested Toca on April 27, 1984, and he was charged with first-degree murder in Batiste's death.
Initially, Margaret Ford represented Toca, but she quickly withdrew as his attorney. Toca's family then hired Henry Julien.
At a suppression hearing on September 14, 1984, Todd appeared to waver in his identification of Toca upon seeing him in person. He testified that he had picked Toca out of a photo array, and a prosecutor asked, "Are you positive now in your identification of Mr. Toca, the individual seated at the bar?"
Todd responded: "Not as I was at that particular time. I identified the picture. I mean, I am comfortable with it, yes."
Toca's trial in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court began in April 1985. There was no physical or forensic evidence tying Toca to the shooting; the state's case relied on the identification of Toca by Todd and Anne Marie.
Julien presented two possible defenses. In a brief opening statement, Julien said the shooting was not deliberate, but also that Toca had an alibi.
Todd and Anne Marie each identified Toca at trial as the gunman who shot Batiste. Defillo testified about the tight friendship between Batiste and Toca, that he never saw one without the other.
Toca testified that on the night before the shooting, he and many other young people had gone to a dance at the Superdome. He said he left with 16-year-old Danielle Bernard, and they drove her car to the MRV Motel, where Toca rented a room for the night. His testimony included a description of the room's interior as well as the price for a 12-hour stay. Toca testified that Bernard left after a few hours, that they talked on the phone, and then he went to sleep.
Bernard testified and denied going to the motel with Toca. In addition, the motel's owner and a clerk testified that the motel didn't rent to minors.
The jury deliberated and at one point appeared stuck. Judge Frank Shea visited the jury room and encouraged the jurors to reach a consensus. One juror would later note: "There was a split and some of us had doubts. I wasn't totally convinced that Toca wasn't at the hotel. The judge came into the jury room to help us with our questions. He was quite a personality. He said that he appreciated us trying to be thorough and taking time to talk, but could we please try to keep an open mind about coming to an agreement, and try to come to an agreement."
The jury convicted Toca of second-degree murder on April 16, 1985. He was sentenced to life without parole.
During the next 15 years, Toca filed a series of appeals. In most of these petitions, he represented himself. Each time, the Louisiana courts affirmed the conviction. In 2000, Innocence Project New Orleans began representing Toca, who was among the organization's first clients.
On August 5, 2004, Toca's attorneys filed a motion for post-conviction relief in state court. Two years later, on April 26, 2006, the attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Both motions drew from the same set of claims, stating that prosecutors had failed to turn over exculpatory evidence and that an investigation had identified the real gunman and bolstered Toca's alibi.
According to the motions, prosecutors didn't disclose statements Todd and Anne Marie made to the police. Their initial descriptions of the gunman suggested a person much taller than Toca, and Todd had also said he probably wouldn't be able to make an identification. Lacking those statements, Julien was unable to challenge either witness on their testimony.
Separately, the motions said the actual gunman was another young man named Edison Learson. He had been with Batiste at the Superdome dance. In affidavits, several witnesses said that Learson had tearfully confessed to accidentally shooting Batiste. The motions noted Learson's extensive criminal record and his resemblance to the original description provided by Todd and Anne Marie.
After Toca was arrested, Bernard called the police and said they had the wrong man. She said the talk on the street was that a young man named Sean Jackson was involved in the shooting. The police showed Jackson's photo to Todd and Anne Marie, but they made no identification. The police report that included this tip wasn't turned over to Julien.
According to IPNO's investigation, Jackson was driving the getaway car, so the victims wouldn't have seen him. They obtained affidavits from several persons who said Jackson had told them about watching the shooting unfold before his eyes.
The MRV motel sat a block away from St. Peter Claver Catholic Church. The church's priest, Father Michael Jacques, said in an affidavit that the motel frequently rented to minors, often not recording the rentals, and that the police and everyone in the neighborhood knew about its shady business practices.
"The MRV management, to protect themselves from losing the motel license, presented false testimony that they would never have rented a room to someone who looked as young as George Toca," one of the motions said.
Toca's alibi had been undercut by Bernard, but she recanted her trial testimony in July 2004. She said that she testified falsely about not being at the motel with Toca because she didn't want her mother to know she had slept with him. "I was young and shy and didn't want to talk about my personal life in front of everybody," she said. "I didn't think it would be a big deal because I knew George was innocent and I didn't think he would be convicted."
The motions also said that Julien was ineffective in his representation. Although prosecutors had not turned over important evidence, Julien didn't adequately prepare for the trial, failing to interview witnesses who saw Toca at the dance or learn about the problems at the MRV motel, which would have bolstered Toca's alibi.
For the next decade, these motions slowly wound their way through the state and federal courts. At one point, Toca's attorneys moved to recuse the state trial judge hearing the motion for post-conviction relief, arguing that his previous work as an assistant to the prosecutor who tried the Toca case made it impossible for him to fairly evaluate the claim that the district attorney's office failed to disclose exculpatory evidence. That motion was denied.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory life sentences for children convicted of homicide were unconstitutional. Toca filed for relief. The state opposed his motion, and the Louisiana courts affirmed his life sentence. At issue was whether the Miller ruling was to be applied retroactively.
In December 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Toca's appeal, which addressed his right to a resentencing hearing but not his innocence.
Before the court could rule, on January 29, 2015, Toca and his attorneys reached an agreement with the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office. Toca entered an Alford plea to manslaughter and to two new counts of attempted armed robbery. Under an Alford plea, defendants do not admit guilt but acknowledge that there is sufficient evidence to convict. Toca left the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola that day.
The plea made the appeal moot, and it was withdrawn. (The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that its Miller ruling should be applied retroactively.)
On December 16, 2021, Toca's attorneys with Innocence Project New Orleans filed a motion to vacate his convictions, claiming the 2015 pleas were coerced. (Jason Williams had been elected district attorney in 2021 and was not involved with those pleas.) "Mr. Toca was given a choice that was no choice at all," the motion said. "Remain in prison or accept the state's offer to plead to a lesser charge in exchange for his release. Unable to refuse the state's offer, Mr. Toca pled guilty to a lesser charge, and was released." The motion said the vestiges of his wrongful conviction continued to hinder his life and that he remains innocent of any involvement in the crimes.
Because an attorney with the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office had represented Toca in earlier appeals while working with Innocence Project New Orleans, a special prosecutor was appointed to represent the state, which joined in the defense motion. A judge granted the motion to vacate on July 20, 2022. The state dismissed the charges on September 13, 2022.
Toca subsequently filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking compensation.
- Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 02-15-2023 Last Update Date: 09-14-2023
Henry James
On November 22, 1981, Henry James spent much of the day helping a friend repair his car in Westwego, Louisiana. Later that day, James and his friend drove the car, but got into an accident and James's friend was arrested.
About 8 p.m. that night, James went to the home of his friend and told his friend's wife what had happened. Then he went home.
At 6 a.m. the following morning, November 23, 1981, the friend's wife was awakened by a man who came in the back door and drew a knife. The man raped the woman in her bedroom and fled.
Police were summoned and the victim told police that she did not know who attacked her and gave a brief description of her attacker.
On November 24, 1981, a police officer patrolling the neighborhood saw James, who roughly fit the description given by the woman. The officer told the detective who was working on the case. The victim, who was white, ultimately selected a photograph of James, who was black, as her attacker after looking through a book of about 75 photographs of black men.
James, 20, was arrested on November 25, 1981 and was put into a line up and the victim identified him again.
At trial, the victim identified James. The prosecution also called a physician to testify that the victim had had intercourse within a few hours of his examination. What the jury did not hear was that serology testing from the rape kit had excluded James as the attacker. The prosecution had turned the laboratory report over to James's defense attorney, but the attorney never introduced them in court.
James testified, describing his day with the victim's husband and said that he was asleep in the morning until he was awakened by his stepfather and then went to work. His stepfather testified that he woke James, another witness testified that he saw James walking to work and gave him a ride and James's boss testified that James was at work at 6:48 a.m.
James was convicted on April 15, 1982, and on May 7, 1982, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
He lost his appeals and ultimately reached out to the New York-based Innocence Project in 2005 to try to get DNA testing performed. Jefferson County crime lab personnel searched for evidence in the case, but were unable to find anything.
On May 3, 2010, Milton Dureau, who worked in the lab, was looking for evidence in a different case when he happened upon a slide from James's case. He remembered the case number from his earlier search for evidence. The slide was sent out for DNA testing and on September 26, 2011, the tests excluded James as the rapist.
On October 20, 2011, 24th Judicial District Judge Henry Sullivan vacated James's conviction and the charges were dismissed. That night, James was put into solitary confinement to ensure his safety and the following morning, October 21, 2011, James was released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. James subsequently was awarded $330,000 in state compensation.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 01-13-2012 Last Update Date: 07-10-2014
Jimmie Bass
On July 17, 1988, three black men entered a convenience store in Cleveland, Mississippi and one ordered a hot dog. As the clerk, 27-year-old Mary Townsend, began to prepare the order, one of the men drew a pistol and announced a robbery. Townsend opened the cash register and one of the men grabbed $185 in cash. The gunman then shot Townsend twice and the robbers fled.
Townsend, who was the wife of a Bolivar County Sheriff's deputy, survived and was shown three different lineups. She identified Markius Thomas in all three lineups. She was unable to identify anyone else, including 18-year-old Jimmy Bass, who also was in all three lineups.
Two weeks after the robbery, a Cleveland police officer asked 14-year-old Keith Thompson about the crime. Thompson would later testify that the officer paid him $250 to falsely implicate Bass. As a result, Thomas and Bass were indicted by a Bolivar County grand jury on charges of aggravated assault and armed robbery.
Thomas and Bass went on trial in Bolivar County Circuit Court in December 1988. Thompson testified that he saw Bass and Thomas run away from the store after the robbery. Thompson's sister, Anita, started to testify that Bass had admitted to her that he planned to rob the store, but in the middle of her testimony, she recanted and said she had been coerced by police to implicate Bass.
Bass testified in his own defense, along with several witnesses who said he was home the night of the crime. On December 7, 1988, a jury found both Bass and Thomas guilty of armed robbery and felony assault. A judge sentenced each to 50 years in prison.
In 1992, Bass encountered Keith Thompson in prison and Thompson told him that he had lied on the stand and that a police officer paid him $250 to implicate Bass in the robbery. Bass filed a motion for post-conviction relief, attaching an affidavit from Thompson, but it was denied in 1997.
In 2004, the Innocence Project New Orleans took Bass's case, and filed another motion for post-conviction relief. The motion disclosed that at the time Keith Thompson testified against Bass at trial, Thompson had as yet undiagnosed schizophrenia and had been arrested as a juvenile numerous times.
The motion said that Thompson was also in violation of the terms of his juvenile parole at the time he gave information to the police, was a prior informant for the police and was paid $250 for his testimony. According to the petition, none of this information was disclosed to the defense prior to Bass's trial.
In addition, the motion said evidence showed that Thomas had committed a burglary with two other men just hours prior to the robbery, that Bass's lawyer had failed to try to interview Thompson prior to the trial and that four additional alibi witnesses had been discovered that were never contacted prior to Bass's trial.
In June 2006, the trial court overturned Bass's conviction, and ordered a new trial based on Thompson's statement and new information about the additional suspects for the crime. The prosecution appealed, but in March 2009, the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the decision. In March 2010, the prosecution dismissed the charges against Bass and he was released.
Bass was granted state compensation of $50,000 for each year of incarceration up to a total of $500,000.
- Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011 Last Update Date: 04-20-2015