ISAAC KNAPPER
Orleans Parish, Louisiana

Incarcerated at 17 years old for 12 years
Exonerated May 6, 1991 by private lawyer Laurie White

On April 12, 1979, two young black men, one holding a pistol, confronted two history professors from the University of Maine outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana, and demanded money. One of the men, John Hakola, struck out against the unarmed robber who was standing closest to him, and ran into the hotel entrance. The man with the revolver then grappled with the other man, Professor Ronald Banks, and shot him in the head. Banks died instantly.

A week later, police arrested two men in a separate tourist robbery and recovered a pistol that was matched to the gun used in the murder of Banks. In May 1979, Isaac Knapper, 16, a promising amateur boxer, was named by a police informant as the gunman in the Banks killing, and Leroy Williams, 17, as his accomplice. Both were charged with first degree murder but Williams accepted a plea bargain reducing his charge to manslaughter in return for testifying against Knapper.

At trial, Hakola could not identify Knapper as the gunman so the case was largely dependent upon the testimony of Williams. Knapper and several relatives and friends testified that Knapper was with them at his mother's house at the time of the crime. The defense also called three eyewitnesses who disputed the prosecution’s case but Knapper was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. His conviction was upheld on appeal.

Years later, a prison inmate obtained a copy of a 31-page report written by New Orleans police detective John Dillman. The report described the April 19, 1979 robbery of tourists near a different New Orleans hotel in which the general physical description of the three robbers closely matched the description of the two wanted subjects in the Banks murder. A man named Jeffrey Zimmerman informed Dillman that he found the gun in a housing project in January 1979 and gave it to one of the robbers before the Banks murder. 

New Orleans attorney Laurie White filed a post-conviction petition and in May 1991, the Louisiana Supreme Court agreed and overturned Knapper's conviction and he was released from prison and exonerated.