Cheri Hayden
Ms. Cheri Hayden is innocent and has been wrongly convicted and imprisoned for over 10 years for a crime she knew nothing about and did not commit. On February 23, 2008, Patricia Landry was killed during a botched purse snatching at Laborie’s Supermarket in Marrero, Louisiana, in which a truck ran her over. Ms. Hayden was convicted based on unreliable eyewitness testimony, a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The eyewitnesses described the driver as being a young woman, and despite the fact that Ms. Hayden was in her mid-40s and looked much older than her age, and the truck driver’s girlfriend was in her early 20s, Ms. Hayden was nonetheless identified. Additionally, when an eyewitness identification procedure was conducted with one of the eyewitnesses, she assumed the actual perpetrator must certainly be in the photographic array shown to her and selected Ms. Hayden even though Ms. Hayden did not fit her initial description of the driver.
Ms. Hayden has terminal brain cancer – having already beaten lung cancer while in prison. We must bring her home.
For more on Cheri’s story, please check out the Unjust & Unsolved Podcast episode featuring Cheri here.