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Reversal of misfortune
Posted: June 11, 2007 1:01 pm
Willie Jackson served 17 years in Louisiana prisons for a rape that his brother confessed to days after Willie’s arrest. That’s how long it took for Louisiana officials to consider the confession of Milton Jackson and to order DNA testing in Willie’s case to prove the identity of the perpetrator. In 2006, test results came back proving that Milton committed the rape. Willie was released from prison that year.
“My brother’s involvement in the situation...” Jackson said before falling silent, still struggling with the betrayal. “Milton sat back and kept quiet until the jury found me guilty. He came forward two days later and told the district attorney’s office that he was the guy, but they thought he was making it up and didn’t do nothin’ about it.”Read the full story here. (New Orleans City Business, 06/11/2007)Read more about Willie Jackson's case in our Know the Cases section.
Tags: Louisiana, Willie Jackson
Louisiana exoneree starts reentry program
Posted: June 6, 2007
John Thompson spent 18 years in Louisiana prison – including 14 on death row – for a murder he didn’t commit. When a prosecutor made public that he had concealed evidence at Thompson’s 1984 trial that could have proven his innocence, he got a new trial and was acquitted of the charges in 2003.
Thompson was released with a small bag of possessions and given $10 for bus fare. He says he founded Resurrection After Exoneration to make sure that no future exonerees are dropped into freedom like he was. And he was recently awarded a two-year, $60,000 grant from Echoing Green to build RAE’s capacity.
Thompson said the wrongfully convicted have a hard time finding a place to live where they can be at peace. Most are forced to move in with family members, which can cause turmoil. Former inmates often have difficulties communicating because no one understands what they’ve been through and the effect it’s had on their psyche.
“You can’t communicate with your family. You don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing,” Thompson said. “You’re supposed to get a job but because of your record or attitude you can’t. It’s not what we wanted to come home to but we have no choice. And that’s the worst — being a grown man having to depend on someone else for help. And it all goes back to that one thing — what I experienced in that prison but no one wants to recognize it.”NOTE: Because Thompson was not exonerated as a result of DNA testing, his case is not listed as one of the 202 DNA exonerations tracked by the Innocence Project.
Resurrection After Exoneration will offer the wrongfully convicted a place to live, jobs and courses in how to manage finances. Participants will be asked to set aside at least 25 percent of their paychecks in savings accounts. After a year, RAE will match the savings to help find independent housing.
Read the full story. (New Orleans City Business, 06/04/07)
Tags: Louisiana, Exoneree Compensation, Government Misconduct
Supreme Court to review justice in Louisiana
Posted: June 26, 2007 3:00 pm
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday accepted one of three Louisiana cases, declining to hear the other two. In Snyder v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether race played a role in the jury selection of a death row case. The all-white jury sentenced Allen Snyder, a black man, to death row in 1996. Previously, in a case from Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a black man’s death sentence because prosecutors had kept black people off the jury.
Without comment, the Supreme Court declined to hear two other Louisiana cases – both involving foreign attorneys practicing law in the United States.
At issue is a Louisiana Supreme Court decision in 2002 that said only foreigners on a path to become citizens may practice law in the state. The lawyers affected by the ruling said they went to Louisiana to help address a severe shortage of lawyers for poor defendants. One British lawyer, Emily Maw, received her law degree from Tulane University in 2003 and is director of Innocence Project New Orleans, which represents indigent clients. She also is a practicing lawyer in Mississippi.Read the full text of the article here.
Find out about other Innocence Projects.
Tags: Louisiana
Wrongful convictions a factor in death penalty case before U.S. Supreme Court
Posted: January 7, 2008 4:40 pm
This spring, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear arguments in a case challenging the constitutionality of capital punishment for the crime of child rape. Defendant Patrick Kennedy, convicted of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter, brought the case, arguing that execution for rape is cruel and unusual punishment. In a friend-of-the-court brief at the Supreme Court, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has raised the concern that impressionable witnesses (such as children) increase the chances of wrongful conviction. The Louisiana law, the group says, presents “an intolerably high risk” that innocent defendants will be put to death.
Read more about Kennedy v. Louisiana here.
Download the NACDL Amicus brief.
New York Times: Justices to decide if rape of a child merits death
The court also heard oral arguments this morning in Baze v. Rees, asking whether Kentucky’s lethal injection practice amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. While a decision on this case is pending, most states have ceased to carry out lethal injections. Read more about Baze v. Rees here.
Tags: Kentucky, Louisiana
Adequate defense counsel can prevent wrongful convictions
Posted: April 11, 2008 4:15 pm
Too many wrongful convictions are caused by the lack of experienced and available public defenders. For decades, the American criminal justice system has failed to consistently provide resources for the defense of people who can’t afford to hire a lawyer themselves. And the inequalities don’t stop with lawyers. Prosecutors have state resources to hire courtroom experts; they have police departments to act as investigators. Public defenders struggle with caseloads in the hundreds and nearly nonexistent funds for investigations and experts. To prevent wrongful convictions in our country, this has to change.
Headlines around the country this month show that budget shortfalls threaten even the low standards of public defense in many states. Lawmakers in Kentucky – where the average public defender has 436 clients in a year – recently slashed $2.5 million from the state’s public defense budget. Georgia’s public defense system is near the breaking point.
But there are signs of progress on the horizon:
This week, commissioners in Houston – the largest urban area in the country without a public defense office – voted to explore the creation of a department. Currently, elected judges appoint attorneys and set budgets for investigation and experts, creating a system with little quality control and no consistency. A public defense office would bring that consistency to the city.
Also this week, Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Pascal F. Calogero, Jr., praised state lawmakers for advances in public defense in recent years, and called for continued growth in the delivery of defense to the poor.
Read more about how overworked – or negligent – defense attorneys have contributed to the problem of wrongful convictions.
Tags: Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Bad Lawyering
New video: Louisiana exonerees reunite after 16 years
Posted: June 19, 2008 10:19 am
Rickey Johnson and Calvin Willis met in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison in the 1980s and quickly became friends. Although they didn’t discuss their cases in prison, the two men were both fighting to overturn their wrongful convictions. Willis learned about the Innocence Project and contacted us seeking assistance. When he found out that Rickey was also seeking DNA testing, he shared the Innocence Project’s address with him.
In the early 1990s, they were moved to different sections of the 5,000-inmate prison and they lost touch. In 2003, Rickey heard that Calvin had been exonerated, but he wasn’t able to say goodbye. Rickey waited for his own exoneration until 2008, when DNA test results proved his innocence of the rape for which he was serving a life sentence. He had served 25 years before his release in January. Today he says he wouldn’t be free if it weren’t for Calvin.
The two friends were finally reunited at the Innocence Network Conference in March. Watch a new video of the men’s emotional reunion, and listen as Calvin describes the moment shackles were removed from his hands and feet.
“It felt like my hands just rose up,” Calvin says.
“I know the feeling,” Rickey responds. “I know the feeling.”
Louisiana exonerees meet for the first time in 16 years [video: 04:12]
Tags: Louisiana, Rickey Johnson, Calvin Willis
Supreme Court strikes death penalty for child rape
Posted: June 26, 2008 2:27 pm
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday issued overturned laws that allow defendants convicted of sexually assaulting children to be executed, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing in the majority of a 5-4 decision that “the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim’s life was not taken.” The decision, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, will lead to resentencing of defendant Patrick Kennedy, who was convicted of raping an eight-year-old girl.
An editorial in today’s USA Today says the court is right to continuing narrowing the death penalty, especially due to the inequality of its application and the chances of executing an innocent person.
When the court brought back the death penalty 32 years ago, it set a standard that executions be administered evenhandedly.
Reality has turned out otherwise. The odds of receiving a death sentence are three or four times greater when the victim is white than if the victim is a minority. Defendants sometimes lack competent legal representation. Evidence can be flawed.
Worst of all is the potential for a mistaken execution. DNA testing has exonerated 16 inmates who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic that handles cases in which post-conviction DNA testing can prove innocence. Such proof, of course, is of no use to a prisoner who has been executed.
Read the full editorial here. (USA Today, 06/26/08)
The National Association of Criminal Defense lawyers filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Kennedy v. Louisiana, arguing that cases with impressionable witnesses – like young children – could have a higher rate of wrongful conviction. Read more about the case, and download NACDL’s brief, here.
Tags: Louisiana
Louisiana exoneree to receive $150K in compensation
Posted: July 7, 2008 3:25 pm
Rickey Johnson, who was freed in January after serving 25 years in Louisiana’s Angola prison for a rape he didn’t commit, will receive $150,000 in compensation from the state for his wrongful incarceration. While Johnson says that no amount of money could ever replace the years he lost, he is looking forward to using the money to start a new business making leather goods such as belts and wallets.
“Rickey Johnson lost more than a quarter of a century, nearly his entire adult life, to a wrongful conviction. He had three young children when he was arrested, and a fourth was born shortly after he was incarcerated; all of those children are now adults,” said Vanessa Potkin, the Innocence Project staff attorney representing Johnson.
Read the full story here. (Leesville Daily Leader, 07/07/08)
Watch a new Innocence Project video of Johnson and fellow Louisiana exoneree Calvin Willis reuniting after Johnson’s release.
Johnson’s compensation comes under a state law that pays exonerees $15,000 for each year they served, to a maximum of $150,000. While Louisiana is one of 25 states with a compensation law, the amounts provided in the law are well behind the federal standard of $50,000 per year served, with no maximum. Several states, including Texas, Utah and Florida, have recently passed laws matching the federal amount, and the Innocence Project strongly supports efforts by lawmakers to bring state compensation laws in line with federal recommendations to include critical social services as well as financial payments.
What’s the law in your state? Find out on our interactive map.
Tags: Louisiana, Rickey Johnson, Exoneree Compensation