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Court TV Best Defense blog profiles Louisiana exoneree
Posted: July 26, 2007 7:00 am
Travis Hayes was wrongfully convicted in Lousiana at age 17 and served eight years before he was exonerated by DNA testing.
Court TV's Best Defense blog profiled Hayes on Tuesday, and anchor Jami Floyd frequently highlights the causes of wrongful conviction. Read more.
Tags: Travis Hayes
Four years of freedom for former death row inmate
Posted: August 8, 2008 5:10 pm
At age 19, Ryan Matthews was sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit. Due mostly to faulty eyewitness identification, Matthews spent five years on death row before being exonerated on August 8, 2004—making him the 14th person proven innocent by DNA after serving time on death row. Tomorrow marks the fourth anniversary of his exoneration.
Matthews was convicted with his friend, Travis Hayes, who falsely confessed to the pair’s involvement in the crime after hours of interrogation. Hayes was finally exonerated in 2007.
Like Matthews and Hayes, many exonerees who missed out on young adulthood had to start their lives almost from scratch. Because one-third of exonerees in the United States were between the ages of 14 and 22 when they were arrested, many never got a college education or job experience. These exonerees served a combined 947 years in the prime of their lives for crimes they didn’t commit.
The Innocence Project is working with youth leaders and youth groups around the country to raise awareness about wrongful convictions and take action to prevent future injustice. Visit our “947 Years: In Their Prime. In Prison. Innocent,” campaign to get involved today.
Tags: Travis Hayes, Ryan Matthews
Three Years Free
Posted: January 20, 2010 5:09 pm
Three years ago yesterday, Travis Hayes was exonerated in Louisiana after serving ten years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit.
Hayes and co-defendant Ryan Matthews were 17 years old when they were arrested for a New Orleans murder. DNA testing implicated another man in 2004 and Matthews was exonerated soon after from death row. Hayes, however, wasn’t exonerated until 2007.
More than one in three DNA exonerees were between 14 and 22 years old when they were arrested, and youth has proven to be a significant factor in wrongful conviction. Learn more about youth and wrongful conviction here.
In Hayes’ case, he and Matthews were driving together in April 1997 when they were stopped because their car resembled a car used by two perpetrators in a failed convenience store robbery that ended with the murder of the clerk. One witness tentatively identified Ryan Matthews as the gunman. Another identified him in a questionable “show-up” procedure after seeing the crime through his rearview mirror.
Hayes was questioned by police for more than six hours, and eventually gave a coerced confession to being the getaway driver. His version of events, however, didn’t fit with reality. Witnesses had seen the perpetrator jump out of a car’s front passenger window. That window of the car driven by Hayes and Matthews couldn’t be rolled down.
At trial, the boys’ defense attorneys presented forensic tests showing that biological evidence from a mask left by the perpetrator didn’t match Hayes or Matthews. Despite this evidence, the two were convicted in 1998. Matthews was sentenced to death and Hayes to life without parole.
On appeal, DNA testing on the mask matched the mask to another man. Based on these results, Matthews was exonerated and freed in 2004. For more than two years after Matthews’ exoneration, however, attorneys at the Innocence Project New Orleans fought to get Hayes’ case back into court. Finally, his conviction was tossed in December 2006, and he was fully cleared in January 2007.
Read more about Hayes’ and Matthews’ cases here.
Tags: Travis Hayes