Profiles

Earl Truvia and his co-defendant Greg Bright were convicted in 1975 of the second-degree murder of Eliot Porter in the Calliope Housing Project in New Orleans and sentenced to life without parole. At the time, Mr. Truvia was 17 years-old and Mr. Bright was 20. Until they were arrested together, they hardly knew each other.

The convictions were based solely on the testimony of a single eyewitness who said she watched Mr. Truvia and Mr. Bright from her window go around the corner with a young boy and emerge without him.

Unbeknownst to the jury, the coroner had placed the time of the death significantly later than the time the eyewitness said she witnessed Mr. Truvia and Mr. Bright from her window.

Nor did the jury hear that the eyewitness was a paranoid schizophrenic suffering from auditory and visual hallucinations, medicating her mental illness with heroin, giving the police information in exchange for cash and testifying under a false name to conceal her own criminal history. Nor did the jury hear—thanks to the fact that their lawyers did no investigation—that there was in fact no line of sight from her window to the place she said she saw Mr. Truvia and Mr. Bright.

Nor did the jury hear that the State had concealed the identity of the likely real suspects—contained in a police report from the time--from Mr. Truvia and Mr. Bright for decades. In February 2002, Mr. Truvia and Mr. Bright presented all of the evidence to a court in Orleans Parish, including a mass of alibi witnesses that neither of their court-appointed lawyers ever bothered to contact.

The convictions were overturned and Mr. Truvia and Mr. Bright were granted a new trial.

The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the reversal of their convictions.

On June 24, 2003, after 27 ½ years in prison for a crime they did not commit, Mr. Truvia and Mr. Bright were both released after the Orleans Parish district attorney dismissed all charges. They left prison with nothing but a $10 check each from the State of Louisiana and garbage bags full of legal paperwork.

Mr. Truvia is currently a paralegal.